


Don’t Wait Up for Me

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action/Adventure, Bucky Barnes and His Terrible Plans, Closure, Forget Your Past, Friendship, Hair Washing, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Reunions, Road Trip (of sorts), Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-05-23 05:52:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6107062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This was the last place where I knew who Bucky Barnes was. No matter how many times they stuffed the Soldier inside me, or tried to rip the old Bucky out, a little bit of him still hung on inside, you know? I just need to see that place where it all changed.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Call Me When You Get There

**Author's Note:**

> For dine: I hope this might make you smile despite all the rough things that are happening.

Bucky surveyed all the gear lumped in a saggy pile to his left. In the oppressive quiet of their apartment, the ticking kitchen wall clock sounded like an artillery bombardment, shell after shell puncturing the strained silence between him and Steve. The mechanical whir of the refrigerator kicked in just then, a sound he almost never noticed but that seemed painfully loud at that moment. Underneath it all, Bucky could hear Steve’s anxious pulse, the way his breath caught with a ragged edge, and it made him ache somewhere under his breastbone—the sound of Steve when he was small, dredging up that desire to take care of him.

Steve crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at the pile. “You sure that’s everything you need?”

“Steve…” Bucky said, and reached for his hand, pulling it to the spot on his chest where he ached, holding it there. Though he avoided Bucky’s eyes, Steve let go of his held breath and tightened the grip around Bucky’s fingers.

He’d been avoiding Bucky’s eyes since they woke up--or rather, since Bucky woke up, because Steve hadn’t slept all night, he could tell. A little petulant, a little anxious. “You’re sure you don’t need me to come with.” By this point Steve had given up even bothering to frame it as a question, apparently.

“I’ll be okay. Pick you up a souvenir?”

Steve glanced up at the ceiling. “How about a pair of lederhosen?”

“Hot.” With a wink, Bucky added, “I’ll have ’em lined with silk so they don’t chafe you.”

“Or one of those, you know, little hats with the feathers.”

“Pretty sure they don’t make any big enough for your fat head.”

His little laugh was so wounded. Steve couldn’t really make this simple for him, but shit, when had anything ever been simple with Steve?

In the months since he’d come back, some unrecognized preoccupation had kept Bucky restless and simmering, even as he was relieved, almost happy to be back with Steve, home at last. An epiphany waiting to happen, a word on the tip of his tongue. Then an offhand mention from Sam about Steve’s repeated visits to the Smithsonian after the Insight debacle—“As if that was the only way he could see you again because we had such lousy luck finding you”—and it lit up inside him. He'd needed closure, Sam had said. A word that had never really held any meaning for Bucky, but he’d been certain it was what he sought.

No surprise that Steve became unglued when Bucky’d told him he wanted to go back to Austria and the place where he’d fallen, but alone. Anger, fear, resentment…that familiar volatile mix of Steve emotions Bucky’d last seen when he’d enlisted, except instead of a tiny ball of storm-cloud fury and anxiety, Steve was a giant slab of disapproving granite, that stubborn chin jutting like the freaking white cliffs of Dover. “It’s not your call to make,” Bucky had said. “This is about what I need and want, not what you need and want,” and Steve had swallowed that down, because he knew Bucky was right and Sam and Natalia had told him already a hundred times that this was a long process and sometimes a person had to go it on their own.

It didn’t mean Steve had to like it, though, god forbid. How could it bring you peace? he’d asked more than a few times, and Bucky just shook his head and walked away, because it wasn’t peace he sought. Steve was legitimately concerned about his safety, they all knew Hydra was still out there trying to rebuild, but Bucky’d been in the wind for a damn long time on his own and survived and if Steve was angling for a way to go with him, that wasn’t the way to do it.

Bucky wasn’t strong enough to shoulder Steve’s anger as well as his own, not strong enough yet; Steve’s had always been so much heavier, at least where Bucky was concerned. A smoldering fire just waiting for the right wind to reignite it and turn the world to ash for everything they’d done to him. It smothered Bucky sometimes still, pulled all the air out of a room. He’d run away from Steve’s relentless chase all those months for precisely that reason, until he’d felt like he had his own head on his own shoulders again—maybe one full of holes and blurry pictures, but still his.

“And don’t mope around here the whole time waiting for me to check in. Go out with the gang to fancy restaurants or take some sick kids to Coney Island or something. See a show—Hamilton’s right up your alley.” Bucky smiled at him and pressed his forehead against Steve’s, and Steve kissed his knuckles.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“What’d they teach you in basic?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Always listen to the sarge?”

“Good boy.”

Behind them in the foyer, the door clicked open and Bucky heard Sam come in, humming a Lou Rawls tune. He cleared his throat. “A’ight. Ready to go anytime you are. Barton says everything checks out and he’s filed the flight plan for you.” Sam picked up one of the duffels and Bucky picked up the other. “What the fuck do you have in here, a body?” Sam groused, leaning over dramatically as he carried the gear.

“Don’t look at me—it was his condition that I bring a fuckin’ armory along.”

Steve shrugged. “You know my motto—always be prepared.”

Sam stared at him, open-mouthed. “Okay, A, you are the king of not being prepared and not even bothering to make the most half-assed of plans, and B, that motto belongs to the frickin’ Boy Scouts.”

Before Steve could say anything, Bucky leaned in and kissed him, rubbing his thumb along Steve’s cheekbone. Sam rolled his eyes and made for the door.

“I could come up to the landing—”

“No need,” Bucky said softly, and kissed him again. “We got it.”

With a frustrated sigh, Steve tried a smile, failing miserably. “Call me when you get there.”

“Okay, Dad,” he replied and Steve huffed. As he tossed the duffel over his shoulder, Bucky added, “I didn’t do all this work to make it back to you only to disappear or die. You can’t get rid of me that easily.” Yet he couldn’t help imagining Steve, wandering woebegone around the apartment and wringing his hands, checking for texts or emails every five minutes, as if he might somehow have accidentally turned off the sound on his phone and missed a crucial communication. Talking himself out of his conviction that this was because Bucky had been unhappy here with him, or he hadn’t done right by Bucky, he hadn’t repaid his debt.

And like Bucky didn’t owe his very goddamn life, however fucked up it might be, to Steve in the first place.

At the door he gave Steve a half salute, and Steve responded with another wan smile. “You know I love you,” Steve said.

There were so many different things Bucky wanted to say, but all he could get out was, “Be back before you know it.”

 

 

* * *

 

It was weird watching Barnes fly the quinjet. Not that Sam didn’t know the guy had skills, he’d seen them in action, but he still had an almost visceral reaction to those Winter Soldier things. They’d had so many conversations since Bucky had come to live with Steve about this sort of shit—what it was like to be one guy in your mind but have this other guy shoved on top of you by force. Having the person you wanted to be ripped out of you over and over and over again, every time he tried to resurface, till you didn’t know you _could_ be him. Barnes once said he wouldn’t mind if the Winter Soldier’s skills vanished with time, but instead they hung on like a bad flu and the old Bucky Barnes had to keep fighting to keep his head above the water.

As Bucky set an autopilot, Sam fiddled with the satellite phone, setting everything up. He’d promised to report in to Steve on a regular basis, like Sam didn’t know Steve would be having JARVIS monitor them by satellite or sneak around behind them with Nat once they got to Europe.

“You know, I’ve never been to the Alps, or hell, even eastern Europe.” He fucking hated the mountains, though he didn’t tell Bucky that before and he wasn’t going to now. The altitude headaches and thin air and cold and constant risk of rockfalls when there wasn’t snow and avalanches when there was...people weren’t meant to be up there and flat land suited him fine. He’d hoped he was done forever with mountains after PJ training.

“You should have stopped by on your way back to the States. Afghanistan, wasn’t it?” Bucky flipped a few mystery switches. He pointedly didn’t remark on the fact that Steve and Sam had been chasing him all over the place everywhere else.

“Yeah, and Iraq before that. Never really had the money or time, I guess, and let’s face it, I’m not the color of the average tourist in Austria.” Bucky grinned. “So where are we going, precisely? I mean, are we actually landing close by, or are we traveling into someplace remote?”

“We’re cleared to make landing outside a small town, the one we went through back in ’45 on our way to the intercept point.” Bucky stared out the left side of the cockpit, and Sam could see a gradual shift in his body language even as they talked, wariness, maybe, or dread.

“You really think you can pinpoint where it happened?”

“It was a lot of math, maps, and grilling Steve to remember the details. Fortunately his brain wasn’t turned into oatmeal over the last seventy years and a lot of that shit’s like yesterday to him. JARVIS helped a lot, too. The landscape’s changed—most of the train tracks are gone, there are some ski places in the area that weren’t there back then. He could see things in the grids a human wouldn’t.” He worried his lower lip between his teeth, and Sam wondered if he wasn’t having second thoughts now that they were finally on their way.

“I sense a but in here.”

There was an indent between his eyebrows, the one Barnes got when he scowled, identical to the one Steve got when he was worried. When Bucky was anxious, he looked so impossibly old and young at the same time it was mind-boggling. The shit these two had gone through...

“When I hit the bottom I went into a river, it was swollen with snow runoff. I don’t remember exactly, but I remember enough. It tossed me up and down, carried me a ways, sort of like—like being spun through a washer or something. Rocks and ice and other debris. My landing point and my resting point could be far apart.”

_Sweet Jesus on a biscuit._

Sam sighed. Good thing they’d waited till late spring, then, so they’d be able to see what they were looking for. “Well, that’s what the wings are for—get a better look.” He put the phone down and dug around in the rations kit, pulling out some water and tossing one to Bucky. “Hey, that reminds me, I meant to ask you a while ago when you first told me this—if you fell in Austria, how’d you end up in the Soviet Union?”

The first time Sam had heard Bucky talk about his death—hell, the first time he’d heard Steve talk about his death—it had really fucked him up. They were both so casual about it, as if the horrific circumstances of their own demises were just the same old, same old. And he was surrounded by vets who’d often talk about the worst shit life had to throw at you pretty calmly, but Sam could hardly even think about watching Riley being blown out of the sky by an RPG without getting the shakes half the time. You could ask Steve and Bucky what seemed to Sam to be rather harrowing questions and they’d answer blandly, factually; if they went into a dark room later and crawled inside a closet to weep and rock themselves to sleep, no one had ever seen it. Maybe this was the greatest generation for you—“Hey, I ever tell you about that time I fell to my death from a speeding train, lost an arm, and ended up in the hands of evil mad scientists?” “No! I ever tell you about the time I crashed a plane loaded with alien-energy bombs into the Arctic Circle and drowned before I froze?” Aw, yeah, the good old days.

“I just assumed, once we found out who you were, that it had happened in Russia or something. Guess I wasn’t paying attention in history class that day. Surprised me when you said we were going to the Alps.”

“That was near the eastern front at the time. I was found by a platoon of Russian soldiers patrolling ahead of their units, they took me back to a field hospital. We may have been allies, but we weren’t pals.” A familiar remoteness was coming back to Bucky, like the fact that they were finally doing this was forcing him to resurrect the guy he’d tried to put to rest. “I was there for a while. So was the NKVD. Everyone knew the war wouldn’t last much longer, really, and the Soviet army, the NKVD were already rounding up all the Nazi and Hydra shit and personnel they could get their grimy mitts on. They swooped in and…ah, they knew there was something up with me. Probably some midlevel brown-noser knew about Zola’s and Schmidt’s work. Knew I was quite the prize.”

“Because he was Hydra.”

“Yeeaahh.” Bucky dragged it out as he rolled his head around on his neck. “The NKVD was lousy with ‘em.” He sipped his water, motioning toward the back of the plane. “You might as well relax for a while. I’ll let you know when we get close.” That was as far as the conversation was gonna go for him, which Sam respected. The only way through this for him would be alone, even if Sam was here with a hand on his back and Steve was waiting at home if he was needed. No one else could take this journey for him, much as Steve wanted to try—Bucky had broken, and broken again and again and again for seven decades, and still somehow put himself together. This wouldn’t mend him completely, but it was his own step forward.

Sam folded down one of the jumpseats and took the satphone out of his pocket.

 _Steve: Halfway there. We’re doing okay. Had a conversation about what happened after he fell._  
_Started out okay but I think he’s feeling down now, because it’s more real._  
_I’ll send email when we get settled with more detail. Please don’t sit around the house watching animal rescue videos and weeping. This is a good thing. Taking care of our boy, you know? It’ll be good for both of you._

He waited a few minutes before a reply showed up. Steve must have been fucking sitting on his damn hands, forcing himself not to reply instantly. These two had no idea how ridiculous they were.

 _Thanks, Oprah._  
_And I’m watching food network, for your information._  
_Be careful._

Sam sent him the middle finger emoji and turned off the phone.

 

* * *

 

Nat poured the wine as Steve finished stuffing the pasta shells and throwing on the rest of the cheese—it was his considered opinion you could never have enough cheese—before shoving them in the oven. He had to admit, he’d only barely been paying attention to her story about what should have been a milk run gone wrong, training some of Fury’s new not-recruits to not-SHIELD while picking up an undercover agent from the remains of a South American AIM group. There was a huge gash on her left side forehead, her left wrist was baffled in a cast--which she had vociferously complained about since she’d walked in his door and Steve wondered idly if it would last the night.

Steve guessed Natasha was the first of the babysitters—they’d probably put together a schedule of Keep Steve Busy buddies, and he might have bridled at that in his previous life, but right now he was more than a little okay with it, because he was a big baby and a sap and he couldn’t stop fretting over Bucky. They had no idea how many active Hydra operatives were even out there at this point, regrouping and rebuilding, and what those operatives would do to get their hands on the Asset—whether to have him finish his mission or to execute him for failing to fulfill it, who knew. Not to mention the various governments that would go to great lengths to haul him in for war crimes or terrorism or whatever else they fancied.

And Austria was the fucking mothership that Bucky was returning to, the place he’d _died_ , the place where Steve had begun his descent into the grave long before he got on the goddamn Valkyrie.

“Drink,” Natasha said and shoved a really large glass of the Spanish red she favored into his hand. “Drink drink drink.”

“It’s not going to make me any happier,” he griped, but did as she said.

“You’re just not trying hard enough.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Then you should have brought the vodka.”

“What have you even been doing with yourself all day since they left?” She gave him a narrow look. “You better not have been plotting with JARVIS to surveil them from the SI satellite.”

“No. I would never.”

Natasha shook her head a few times, giving him that appraising stare. “Oh my god. The worst.”

In one way or another, she was always telling him that. He remembered going to a hockey game back in DC, wearing his go-to low-key outfit so he wouldn’t be noticed and photographed and splashed all over the sports section with a “Cap at the Caps” photo—and instead wound up on the front page with a picture mockingly captioned “Cap in a cap at the Caps.” She’d sent him a text that day: _Amateur. You’re the worst. :-D_ and when he’d come home there were new fake glasses, a fake mustache, and a box of hair dye in his mailbox.

“Anyway. They only just got there.” He leaned against the counter, downed the rest of his wine, and poured some more. Sam had been teaching him about wine; he thought he was starting to get the pleasure other people found in it and was able to detect the distinct flavors. He and Bucky got a lot of enjoyment out of exploring new foods, the wines and the beers, all the things they’d never had access to when they were young or had limited exposure to because of rationing in wartime Europe. It was a privilege to be alive together, to have this and to share it.

“Did you have to literally sit on your hands to stop yourself from texting frantically for updates?”

With a speaking look he turned and got out the stuff to set the table with.

“I’ll put that down as a yes.” She pursed her mouth at his best sour glare. “Okay, okay. I’m just…I know this isn’t easy for you.”

“I just got him back,” Steve said with a shuddery sigh. “I just got him back and we have no idea who’s out there and what could happen to him and—” He bit off the last part.

“Oh. I see.” With a little flip of her hair, she hopped off the bar stool and came over to him, rubbing the side of his arm. “Because he didn’t ask you to go with.”

A familiar sharp sting crept in behind his eyes; he shrugged, touched the tip of his tongue to the corner of his mouth. “He blames me. And how can I fault him for that?”

“You cannot be serious.”

He waited, she sighed. “Do you remember Tony’s birthday party?”

“Yes, of course,” Natasha answered, puzzled.

“Good, because I don’t!”

She leaned over the counter and laughed, sloshing wine everywhere in an uncharacteristically graceless motion. “It was pretty epic, I’ll give you that. I never thought that stuff they whipped up would really keep you guys drunk. But—”

“The point is, I remember next to nothing after Tony and Bruce gave us the stuff, except there was this fuzzy thing in the back of my mind that kept bothering me for days and days, like I’m pretty certain it happened but I can’t remember for absolute sure. We were leaning on the railing on the rooftop balcony, and Bucky made a crack about being careful not to push him over again.” He was positive he wasn’t making that up, that it had really happened. Mostly.

Leaning back against the counter, Nat held her hands out in front of her, palms facing him. “That—that is your anxiety talking. And whatever the hell they put in that science experiment they called booze.”

Maybe, maybe not. He regarded her for a while, thinking of how she’d opened herself up to him in Sam’s bedroom so long ago, allowing a glimpse of her own guilt that she carried like a scar. If anyone would understand the blame he felt for Bucky’s fall, it’d be her, he’d figured. The stinging, sharp ache that made his chest heave each time they talked about this plan of Bucky’s. “Why else would he be going back there alone?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Steve, because he’s weary and worn out and this has been hanging like a sword over his head since he broke their conditioning, and getting closure will help him move on?” Natasha chewed on her lip and the _ding_ of the oven timer sounding made them both jump a little. She waited for him to set everything on the table, poured more wine, and sat down. They ate silently for a while—why the hell did people always call these kinds of silences companionable?—until she said, “I went back, to the place where they started my training. One of the first things I ever did once SHIELD let me off probation.”

He blinked.

“The building is rotten and falling apart, all the Soviet markings have been defaced or looted, but the foundation was still there. I told myself it was to see if there was any useful intel left, down in the basements and in the back rooms, stuff that only I might understand, even though I know the protocol was to burn everything. But it was really because I needed to say goodbye to a part of myself I’d chosen to leave behind the day Clint offered me a choice.” She fingered her arrow necklace, one of the only tells she had and one she showed only to a select few, because no one had a poker face like Natalia Romanova and he admired that about her, wished sometimes he could be like that too.

Never once had Steve been tempted to return to the spot where the Valkyrie was found, or Schmidt’s mountain fortress where he’d last seen everyone else alive.

As if she could read his mind—well, she could, he was pretty certain—she smiled tenderly. “We all process things differently. The history books say that when you went down on the plane, you told Peggy Carter it was your choice. You made that decision.”

“Oh.” Well, wasn’t he the jackass. They finished dinner and she got out the box of pear and blackberry tarts she’d picked up on her way over, made some tea, strong and pungent.

“There are so many people hungry to get a piece of him, waiting for him to be alone and without my support. All this work we did to bring him back won’t mean anything to them.”

“That’s why Sam’s there. Wasn’t he your compromise? So Barnes wouldn’t be alone? You keep forgetting Barnes did this on his own, came back here on his own power, that he’s a grown-ass man and we’ve removed all his trigger phrases and he’s strong, Steve, so much stronger than anyone has a right to be after what he endured. But you can’t wrap him in cotton wool or bubble wrap or encase him in amber or something.” The corner of her mouth turned up and she slid a third tart over to him. God, he loved her crooked smile, especially when he got so far inside his head he couldn’t see out.

“You underestimate my coddling skills.”

She snorted and they finished their dessert. “You wanna head downstairs and spar or something?”

“Aren’t we supposed to wait a half hour after eating?”

“Come on, it’ll be fun. You can pummel away your frustrations on me, I’ll let you.”

Steve wanted to tell her what a good friend she was, how she’d helped fill a void inside him, along with Sam, that at the time he’d thought went so far down there was no bottom to it. But he settled for a nod and grabbed his shield. “You always know what to say to me.”

“A shared love of beating people up might be different from most people’s ideas of what makes a solid foundation for a friendship, but it works for us. In the words of that great philosopher Homer Simpson, this allows me to combine my love of helping people with my love of hurting them.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

When Steve got back to his apartment, sweaty and bruised and rubbery, there was a new text from Sam on his phone, along with two pictures. The first was of Bucky in profile, staring straight ahead with a really weird look on his face.

_You know how this motherfucker said there might be a LITTLE snow still in the mountains but that was good because it’d probably help him find the spot better and he made me get cold weather gear but it was late April so it was just a precaution?  
He is a lying liar who lies. Look at this. LOOK._

The second picture was of the village the Commandos had started out from back in ’45, completely covered in snow.

 _They say this is the latest snowstorm in recent history. Now we have to go to some tyrolean disneyland store or other and he expects me to get crampons and shit. SNOWSHOES. He expects me to snowshoe or cross country ski or something._  
_My people do not do winter pastimes. I did not sign up for this shit._  
_Ducking snow._  
_AUGH ducking._  
_FUCKing. goddamn autocorrect._

There was also a new voice message from the same number.

“Hey Steve, promised I’d call when we got here. I know Sam already sent you a text, but, yeah, they apparently got hit with a late snowstorm while we were on our way over here. We’ll have to take a short detour for a little more gear. We don’t really know how Sam’s wings will function in this kind of weather. Didn’t want you to worry. You haven’t exactly been a fan of this idea since I first told you, but I was sort of thinking about it on the plane and... The thing is, you’ve always been the angriest person I’ve ever met. That’s okay, I loved you that way, I loved that about you. But it’s not like I’m not already anxious about this myself and I can’t carry that and your anger and your guilt at the same time. This was the last place where I knew who Bucky Barnes was. No matter how many times they stuffed the Soldier inside me, or tried to rip the old Bucky out, a little bit of him still hung on inside, you know? I’m not good with the words anymore, so I can’t explain this feeling, but I just need to see that place where it all changed. Finish the job of integrating this new guy with the Bucky I lost back there.”

There was a long pause where Steve thought maybe the message was over, and then Bucky said, “I remember the night we came to this village, on our way up to the train. I remember the place we stayed that night, the stables with those huge draft horses, and how nervous they made Jim. How that farmer wanted to help us so he could stick it to the Nazis and Hydra because he hated them and how they took from the people around there. And the next morning the look on your face when they gave us blood sausage for breakfast. I remember holding your hand while we slept and that I didn’t care where we were, as long as I was with you. You couldn’t get rid of me back then, even when you tried to send me home, and you’re not gonna get rid of me now.” Bucky sighed. “So yeah, call me back when you get this if you feel like it, doesn’t matter what time it is here.”

 _You made that decision._ He wouldn’t call Bucky back, not right now, not till Bucky’d had a chance to start searching in earnest, as a show of support. Steve smiled and put the phone down, and went off to his studio to paint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2: Bucky and Sam's excellent adventure takes a turn when unexpected guests arrive.


	2. If We Knew You Were Coming, We'd Have Baked a Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course they were halfway down the canyon wall when it all went fubar and Sam figured Bucky was gonna be the first person in history to die twice in the same spot.

Everything looked familiar up here, and nothing did. Bucky checked his topo map once more, compass and altimeter, scanned the wall of the canyon in front of him. To get where he wanted to go on the shortest route, they’d have to climb a diagonal along the blue frosted cliffs, up at least two waterfalls; the scenery was spectacular and forbidding, cathedrals of ice and snow.

Seventy years of erosion from snow and rain and wind had carved new faces on these mountains, and the world had long forgotten that a soldier had ever fallen here. If they were even in the right place—the numbers said they were in the vicinity, but his memory wouldn’t let the pieces come together.

Still, the landscape gave up its bits and pieces to a keen eye, even beneath its white cloak, and he could see the slightly leveled-off ledges carved into the mountainside farther to their east: train tracks. If they followed the abandoned line, they would find that tunnel; only one quadrant on the grid showed three high stone rail bridges within a few miles of each other, ending with a tunnel in the appropriate location.

“Anything look familiar?” Sam asked behind him, and Bucky flinched.

“Yes and no.”

They’d detoured to pick up ice climbing gear, much to Sam’s dismay; he’d insisted that they didn’t need all that equipment when he had his wings, but they really had no idea what kind of flight response they could expect in this sort of weather—and Steve would absolutely murder Bucky if he got his other best friend killed. In the Air Force, Sam had done mountain rescue as part of his training; he knew how to use most of the essential gear, but clearly he hated it and his waterfall skills were mostly theoretical, he insisted.

Sam had actually knocked Bucky flat by challenging him if he knew how all that shit they were buying—ice axes and pickets and ice screws and anchors—worked, and Bucky had just stared at him with cheerful condescension and said, “Russia, remember?”

“Oh, lots of assassinations on remote snowy mountaintops, then?” Sam had asked, and since he’d made Bucky laugh with that, full-throated and grinning, Bucky was willing to forgive his squawking. But Sam would never be able to carry all their gear and Bucky even on his souped-up wings, such a plan would require multiple trips up and down the canyonsides, and that was assuming the alloy Stark used wouldn’t ice up—they hadn’t yet tested the “feathers” structure of the alloy in this sort of environment—or there wouldn’t be wind shear or anything else that might render the wings dodgy or plain inoperable. It was just a lot easier to toss it all onto a sled and hump it up the mountains.

“Dark soon. Think we should pitch that tent? You must be hungry by now.” If left to his own devices, Bucky would have pushed through—he could see well enough in the dark and the temperature drop wasn’t enough to make a difference to him when it was this cold. He despised the cold, he and Steve had a shared visceral loathing of any temperatures below about fifty, not that he was willing to admit that to Sam. Even when the steam of summer coated his skin he wasn’t warm enough, but discomfort and pain were his familiars, he’d long ago learned how to turn them off when necessary, control the basic human requirements of a body like hunger and sleep. It wasn’t exactly lost on Bucky that this was also one of the reasons Steve had wanted Sam to come along: if Steve couldn’t be here to mother hen him into meeting those needs, then by god, someone would.

“Yeah. I’m absolutely dying to try that freeze-dried chicken piccata with tagliatelle, and the raspberry crumble. Mm-mm.” Sam rolled his eyes and set to work making camp with Bucky, anchoring the tent into the ledge, stowing the gear.

By the time dark settled inside the canyon, the edge of daylight pale yellow and blue along the sharp teeth of the mountains to the west, Sam had the stove going. You couldn’t deny that it was beautiful up here, despite the miserableness of the weather. Their equipment and clothing were light years beyond the crap they’d had back in ’45, when all they could rely on was oilcloth and stiff leather and wool, ropes that soaked up the snow like a sponge and cut even on the dullest rock and rifles that gummed up and jammed. He’d told Sam, “Bellyache all you want, but stuff’s pretty good now,” and that included the food.

When they’d landed and he’d caught sight of the snowfall, Bucky’d instantly regretted dragging Sam along on this misadventure; Sam had appeared to have just as instantly twigged to that and said, “What, you thinking I’m gonna drag you down now?” and he’d had to think for a bit about whether he should answer, but then said, “Yes.” Sam had scoffed and given him the finger.

The locals they’d talked to said it was the latest snow they could recall, for at least a few generations. Bucky’d been thinking about that a lot lately: how far the memories went back, what stories they told themselves. As far as anyone here knew, he and Sam were with the Avengers Initiative; Barton had set it all in motion so there was a faint veneer of legitimacy and nothing about the Winter Soldier peeked through the cover, yet Bucky wondered how many of them would remember Captain America and the Howling Commandos had come through here and think maybe he was returning. People whose mothers and fathers had met them, helped them on their first journey through these mountains. Had they talked about it, afterward? Had they shared the story that one of the captain’s team had died here? Or had they simply enjoyed the right to say they’d played a small part in the capture of a Hydra VIP, told their children ghost stories? The Commandos had been lucky that way—to get the help they needed when it came time to get Zola. Well, lucky until they weren’t.

Sam and Bucky settled in for their first night in close quarters, and Bucky realized he’d never shared a tent with anyone outside of the Commandos or Steve. He’d always kept apart as the Asset: even when he was on missions with a team or they let him off the leash, he’d had no use for people, not after the early days when there was still a part of him that was human, when he’d infiltrated an American army base to make sure he could still pass undetected, smoking and drinking with his fellow soldiers that he’d been made to believe were the enemy. As the years went on, as those little pieces of Bucky Barnes pushed their way to the top like slivers working their way out of skin, his masters had isolated him more and more, beat harder to force the Soldier into place—a square peg in a round hole.

As they settled into their sleeping bags—Christ, what a luxury nylon and down were compared to what they’d had during the war, what he’d had as the Asset—it sounded, based on Sam’s breathing patterns and heart rate, like he wasn’t falling asleep any easier than Bucky was. A dread anticipation of being asked if anything was wrong settled icy in his chest, a question he’d mostly broken Steve of asking but that was a perennial favorite of everyone else’s. The darkness made everything feel even closer, tighter than it already was, the two of them nearly on top of each other.

Bucky didn’t give Sam enough credit. He merely asked, “You really think the ice on those falls is solid enough to bring all our gear across? It looked like there were some splashy spots, after that first melt, and no telling how solid they were on refreeze.”

“Yeah, it looks pretty good to me. We’re not far, I can see the ridge where I think we set up the line. And the equipment we had back then was shit, so if we could do it then...”

“Wasn’t that, like, one of the most brutally cold winters, though? Man, those were some crazy stories Steve told me.”

“All the crazy came from him.”

Sam laughed. “Was it weird, seeing that today?” Nice trick, the way he snuck that in there.

In the dark, though, Sam wouldn’t be able to see his urgent attempts to swallow and how he worked his jaw back and forth, the tension in his hands and arms. “A little. It’ll seem more real when we get close to that bridge.”

Sam sighed. “Look, Bucky, I’m not trying to bust your chops here. You don’t have to tell me anything about what you’re thinking or feeling, I’m not gonna ride you about that. But just check in with me once in a while, okay? Let me know if you want to turn back, or take a break, or if you got a change of plans.”

He understood why Sam would say that, the obligation he felt as a friend, as someone who worked with traumatized people. It didn’t mean Bucky had to buy in to the belief that he was unaware of his own thoughts—his mind might an oubliette filled with skittering, twitching things and even deeper holes he couldn’t see in the darkness, but Bucky was the one in charge of when that trapdoor was opened. Still, there was a comfort in knowing Sam was willing to take him at his word when he said, “Okay.”

_“For fuck’s sake, why?” Steve asked, his eyes brilliant hard diamonds, his face leached of color. “What could—why would you ever want to return to a place like that.” He sat up in bed and ran his fingers roughly through his hair, tugged at it._

_“You act like me coming back here with you is the end of the story. ‘The End’ in big bold letters. God. Just—Sam was telling me about you going back over and over to the Smithsonian, trying to come to terms with all the things you’d lost. But then I came back to life and punched you right in the face and all the closure you’d been seeking vaporized. And I was sorry for that, sorry for you, because I know I wasn’t the only thing you were trying to get a hold on but— How can you not see that—that was not exactly a thing I ever got to try myself.”_

_Steve twisted the sheets in his hands so hard they’d rip, so Bucky unclenched his fingers and folded his hands within his own. “Every time I would get pieces back, in those first months I was free, it began with the fall. Every. Time. I don’t know that this’ll put it to rest, but can’t I at least try without you piling on the guilt?” It was clear the way this was wrenching Steve, twisting him, his hopes and desires for everything they could try to be again stained by his failure: to protect Bucky, to survive Bucky._

_“But alone? Christ, Buck, that’s—beyond dangerous. It’s—” He couldn’t bring himself to say “suicide.” Steve’s chest heaved and something inside Bucky flailed, wanted to throw the whole plan out because Steve was hurting, Steve needed him, forever, always. Every muscle in Steve’s body was as tight as steel cables._

_“Right, because I’ve never been any good at taking care of myself.”_

_“Fuck you.” Steve paused before adding, “What, did you wait until after sex so I’d be more agreeable and you could just slip this past me in the afterglow? Like I’d cheerlead you on?” It was good to see that Steve could still be a vicious little terrier when he wanted to; he’d be all right, he’d handle it once he wore himself out._

_“This is about what I need and want, not what you need and want.”_

_He gave Bucky his supercilious I-know-better look:_ who are you trying to fool here, pal _. “If you refuse to take me for backup, for moral support, whatever, then at least take someone else. Nat or Sam. Clint, anyone, just please don’t go alone.” But they both knew all that really meant was that Steve believed Bucky’s decision was personal, directed straight at him, like Bucky’d decided to not pick him for a baseball team or something._

_“I don’t need a nursemaid—”_

_“I’m not asking you take a nursemaid. I’m asking for you to have someone watch your fucking back. None of this is over. I don’t know if it’ll ever be over.” Steve huffed and threw himself back down on the bed, limbs splayed out, a dead starfish. It might have been cute when he was little, but it was absurd now._

_Bucky felt himself—this new person he was trying so fiercely to hang on to—flickering in and out, the filament of a light bulb sparking, going dead; he was dissolving in the darkness of the Soldier again._

_He counted on his fingers, tapping thumbs to each finger over and over. “I’ll think about it, all right?” With a grudging huff Bucky drew Steve into the curve of his arms. It wasn’t like he’d done more than spitball this idea anyways, he certainly hadn’t planned anything out or started organizing things, so he just held on to Steve as hard as he could. Held him and kissed him and reassured him that this wasn’t an ending. Reassured himself._

_He remembered the night he’d found Steve, finally alone, in Cluj-Napoca, and seeing him again, memory made flesh and bone, knowing he couldn’t leave. Somehow they’d ended up on the bed, boots off but fully clothed, under the covers, lying on their sides and just...staring at each other, arms tucked under their cheeks and Steve’s fingers laced with his between them like a heart. Staring as though they might somehow read each other’s thoughts and—maybe they could, Bucky felt like he knew every thought whirling along through Steve’s brain: all the ways he might bring Bucky home with him and make a life and set fire to anyone who tried to tear them apart again._

_They were like that for—god, hours, he thought, until the lines in Steve’s forehead appeared and his brows drew down and he said sheepishly, “Are you hungry? Because I’m starving,” and Bucky had burst into laughter. It sounded like an old machine gun, stuttering and coarse, but Christ, he hadn’t laughed in seventy years so give him a break. Steve laughed too, a little shy chuckle. Since it was an American-style hotel he figured there must be something they could get, at least downstairs. “I don’t give a shit if it’s horrible weird sandwiches wrapped in plastic that have been sitting there for days or tiny bags of pretzels, I gotta eat something and I’m not leaving this room. Not leaving you.”_

_But there was room service and a coffee maker in the room, so they ate and ate—strange European-style cheeseburgers and crisps, cheese sandwiches, cakes—on the bed and then curled around each other afterward and kissed and petted but nothing more. Steve was confused in his love and anger and fear, punchy with it, but Steve pleaded with him “stay,” so Bucky stayed, and he said “come home,” so Bucky went home._

_It was the same thing when he’d said he wanted to go to Austria, but this time when Steve asked him to stay, Bucky told him no._

But this—this was good, too, though, Bucky thought now as he listened to Sam’s breaths whisper shallower and shallower—it was good to have someone along who could see more than his love and anger and fear, a clear-eyed friend. There was a bit of space to breathe in, and time to figure it out.

 

* * *

 

A hand slid over the top of Steve’s laptop screen and slammed it shut. “Tell me you’re not spying on Bucky.” Nat sat down uninvited, pursed her lips.

“I’m not spying on Bucky.” He drained the last of his coffee and got up to pour one for her and another for himself. This was the danger of working in the common area—you went in search of company but company meant people.

“Uh huh.” She accepted the mug and eyebrowed him. “Some people might call that an invasion of privacy. People like, I don’t know, the Sentinel of Liberty.”

“That was a complete, utter bullshit propaganda line and I’m surprised and disappointed to hear it come out of your mouth.”

“I’m surprised and disappointed to hear you avoid the topic.” With a narrow look, she added, “You are one poppin’ fresh mess, I swear.”

“I wasn't spying on Bucky, really. Here.” He opened his computer and showed her, not that it wasn’t damning in its own right but it wasn’t technically spying.

“You—you actually paid attention to us?” He’d been sifting through the deep web: obscure or abandoned Usenet groups and message boards with coded information, anything where mentions of the Winter Soldier or the Avengers Initiative might be filtered through seemingly normal chatter, unindexed, plausibly deniable. “I’m very impressed, Steven.”

“Well, you always like to remind me I’m the worst.”

“Found anything?”

“So far, only a couple of strong possibilities for Hydra—an old newsgroup for bird-watchers, and a message board that ostensibly sounded like cat fanciers, of all things, but whose members seem peculiarly interested in conspiracy theories.”

“Probably a good sign that there’s not much.” She tapped the table, considering something.

“Come on, do you really think a couple of guys from the Avengers traveling around Hydra’s old stomping grounds is gonna go unnoticed? That they haven’t been waiting for this opportunity like dogs waiting for their bones? They may be fascist idiots who didn’t know when to stop when they’d already technically won, but they’re not stupid.”

“You could have had JARVIS do this, you know. It’d be a lot easier for him to navigate the dark net and scrape that stuff, plus you wouldn’t have to look at all the unsavory crap with your tender eyes.” It wasn’t like he didn’t know that, and it _was_ really horrible and disgusting out there, but what else was he going to do with his copious spare time. She noted down the sites he’d already mined on her phone and slid the computer back to him. “Let me and Stark set something up. If anything more significant than random chatter is out there, JARVIS will find it.”

“But then what will I do about my desperate, clingy need to obsess over Bucky and Sam?” He could hardly sit still for the fretting. “How come you’re here, anyway?”

“Old-timey cocktails.”

“Is that the name of a band, or something I’m supposed to know about?” Steve seemed to remember Pepper saying something about a party like that, but he’d been working on his petulant self-sorry act and hadn’t really paid attention.

“Cool bar that’s like an old speakeasy? Old forgotten cocktail recipes? Pepper’s _birthday party_?” At Steve’s blank look Nat rubbed her forehead. “They’re also doing it as a benefit for the historical preservation group. Everyone dresses up like the ’20s and ’30s, I’ve left some clothes in your place.” Natasha made little claw-hands at him and he laughed. “You’re going with me and Clint, and you’re going gladly without argument, and you will dress up. They’ll be practically orgasmic that era-appropriate Captain America is there.”

As soon as he opened his mouth, she clapped a hand over it. “How do you even know my sizes?” he protested against her palm.

“Please.” Her disdain was palpable. Steve recalled her in the Target store hurling clothing at him when they were running from SHIELD; she’d gotten most of his sizes right with the first item on pure guesswork alone or that weird voodoo spy sense she had, except the shoes and jeans inseam.

The party had that peculiar effect of reminding him what a curious relic he was—and Bucky now, too, their exclusive little club. It bemused him, each time he considered what had traveled down through history, the specific things people chose to hold on to as representative of the past. Aspects of his life that were...commodities, now, for people’s ersatz nostalgia. Some of the attendees had done their homework and didn’t look like they’d picked up a faux Depression-era outfit at the nearest costume shop where all the details were just this side of inauthentic, but others bore witness to the surface understanding and quaint, clichéd concepts of how people looked back then—and apparently no one seemed to understand that not everyone who’d lived during the ’20s was a flapper or a gangster. How little he fit this world, his tiny club within a club of people old enough to remember that time and young enough to be able to chew their own food and walk on their own power.

Nat sidled up to him at the bar—she looked gorgeous, dressed like a screen siren in a flowing ivory silk charmeuse dress and finger-waved hair, his red-haired Jean Harlow. “I hope you’re not pouting,” she said and tossed her feathery stole over her shoulder as Clint joined her on the other side.

“Just taking a break.” He shrugged. “I guess I’m out of the habit of society recently. All this running around after Bucky.”

“And then canoodling in your little love nest for the past couple months,” Clint said, and snapped his suspenders. He looked ridiculous in a hat, it was tempting to bat it off his head.

Steve raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Come on,” Clint said, shrugging. “Everybody knows. Even the barista in the lobby knows you’re not just pals.”

He shook his head— _why_ —glanced over at Pepper and Tony in the opposite corner of the swanky bar, and asked, “Will he be all right?” Tony was leaning against a wall or maybe propped up by it, his eyes closed, a slight sheen of sweat on his skin. He was dressed in a rumpled light suit and boater hat that had an odd effect of making him look like Huey Long with a goatee, which Steve supposed the sweat only added to. “It looks like he’s dying.”

Clint waved his hand and made a face at Steve that said _I know you’re trying to change the subject_. Steve shrugged.

While they’d been chasing Bucky, Steve had never had trouble convincing people he was simply trying to save his friend—because it was true, even if there was more to it for him. But once Bucky was home with Steve it had become a hell of a lot more obvious to anyone with eyes just how far that friendship extended, though bless Sam and Natasha for not saying anything. Steve stared at his drink; the limited-time-only pleasant buzz of the drinks had worn off and he was morose again, his skin felt tight and itchy and he wanted to go home—even if home was empty and Bucky was gone and they hadn’t had that many months to _canoodle in their love nest_.

It was a bitter little pill stuck in Steve’s throat, to think about all that wasted fucking time on the hunt. _How close he was to giving up, when he came back to his hotel room in Cluj to find the lights on and the door held open by the swing lock._

_Bucky was sitting on the desk chair in his room, slumped in the seat, his face expectant and wary. Of course he’d waited till Steve was traveling alone to show himself; why hadn’t he thought of trying that before. Bucky nudged the maps on the desk, as if to say he’d caught Steve out, and then said, “You think I don’t remember you. That’s why you keep chasing me.”_

_“No, I_ know _you remember me,” Steve said, holding his hands out, helpless, hopeless. “I saw it on your face on the helicarrier, and I know you were the one who took me out of the river—because I was unconscious and I sure as hell didn’t crawl up there on my own power.”_

_Bucky shook his head and muttered, “Suicide.” His face made the statement: you were gonna let me kill you, or just die on your own power if I didn’t do it for you._

_Steve shrugged. “Maybe.”_

_“So what do you think this is gonna accomplish?” Bucky sneered and shoved the maps into a pile. “You think they’re gonna let me waltz home with you, your SHIELD or the U.N. or any government of the last, what, seventy years? You really think they’re not going to dump me in a cage in a black site prison or hook me up to something and crack my brain open? I’m not letting you or anyone else take me again, I can’t.” His voice broke when he said_ hook me up _and something inside Steve seized hard, stopped his heart for a faltering second._

_And he said it as if Steve was stupid or naive. “No, they won’t, because I’ve been working pretty fucking hard to make sure they don’t. What the hell do you think I’ve been doing while you’ve been forcing me to take a no-expenses-paid around-the-world vacation? Playing mumblety-peg and twiddling my thumbs?”_

_There was a slight twitch at the corner of Bucky’s mouth, and his eyes suddenly came alive. “I got news for you, pal, nobody plays mumblety-peg anymore.” Then he was up and across the room before Steve even had a chance to blink, shoving him against the wall with much more force than necessary as a little spark ignited in Steve’s lower belly._

_Steve made to slap him away, his frustration and annoyance and surprise all boiling out of him at once, but Bucky caught his hand in his palm; Steve brought his other hand up and actually grazed his face as Bucky ducked away. He laced his fingers through Steve’s fingers, hauled Steve’s hands back against the wall clutched tight, and Steve could feel the smooth metal cool against his skin, hear the gentle hum of its gears inside._

_He thought Bucky’s face must mirror his own: stupefaction, relief, frustration, astonishment. Before he could say anything, Bucky leaned forward and kissed him, rough and mean, and the kisses Steve returned were shot through with hunger and grief and shattering happiness—he was, he was splintered into thousands of tiny fragments of joy. Bucky clutched at his face and Steve gripped his shoulders, the kiss plunging them deeper and deeper, until Bucky abruptly pulled away and Steve opened his eyes._

_Hand held up—a warning or appeasement?—Bucky stepped back, eyes as wide as Steve’s, biting his lower lip with a ragged sigh._ Save me, _Steve wanted to say, but all he could do was reach out and grasp Bucky’s metal wrist and hold firm. “Stay,” he pleaded. “Stay.”_

_But Bucky kept moving back toward the door, until he stopped with his hand on the knob, his shoulders sagging in a way that said he knew Steve would never really release him, that he might as well get used to the fact that they were bound together here and now every bit as much as they’d been in the last century. “I suppose it’s the only way you’ll stop chasing me, isn’t it.”_

“Hey,” Nat said, voice shaking him out of his head, and she put her hand on his arm. “We’ve put in a decent appearance, we can go. I think Pepper would like to get Tony home.”

Steve had specifically turned his phone off so he wouldn’t be tempted by it, but maybe there was a new message waiting for him that he could listen to in privacy and mope about. “Yeah, let’s.”

Steve wanted to walk, even though he always got hopelessly lost down here as soon as he hit Canal Street, but Nat jerked her head at the car so he flapped his hands and gave in. The five of them piled into the limo, Tony resting his head on Pepper’s shoulder, and her long-suffering smile made him chuckle. Natasha kicked her shoes off and let Clint rub her feet.

They were halfway home when Steve said, watching the lights whiz by as they zoomed through the streets, “It’s not that I was in love with him.” He was so quiet that Natasha had to lean over his arm to hear him; he could feel the forbidden, soft curve of her breasts against his elbow, smell her Cuir de Russie. “ _In love_ implies you can fall out of love, too. That it’s—it’s a transitory state that could be undone. It’s just that I loved him, always, forever, in every possible way you can love someone. And when he was gone, there was nothing left of me.”

Natasha squeezed his hand and Pepper gave him a smile of infinite kindness and said softly, so as not to disturb Tony, “We won’t let you lose him again.”

It was a nice sentiment, but they all knew there was nothing anyone could do about any of it.

 

* * *

 

When he was stressed or frightened or simply needed a way to pull himself back from the edge, Bucky counted. He couldn’t remember when exactly he’d begun—sometime after he saw the Smithsonian exhibit, most likely, as so many things dated from then—but it was a strangely comforting ritual. Sometimes he crawled back to the beginnings of his memory as a starting point, sometimes he counted from the end and worked backwards, like now: how many on the flight deck, how many on the expressway, how many on the streets below, how many on each of those faceless jobs before Pierce brought him to the U.S. Either way, the number rose as he counted each death: thumb to each of his fingers, tap tap tap.

He was somewhere around the late ’60s when Sam finished swapping out his gear and stood at Bucky’s shoulder. Behind them loomed the remaining arches and tracks of the railway bridge, and beyond the curve ahead would be the place where he fell. The past few hours, climbing the fragile ice and scrambling up the face of the rock ledge, should have been the scary part, but this was—he thought he could hack it, simple, just confront it and move on. He hadn’t expected the thickness in the bottom of his throat, the breath that sat like sludge inside his lungs, struggling to get out. A tremble in his hands.

Sam wouldn’t give him pity, though, or self-esteem him or mommy-voice him. “How far along these tracks do we go?” he asked, and Bucky was grateful for his calm.

“Around that bend. Steve said there was a tunnel they went through some meters after I fell. He mostly hung on to the wall of the train until he had to get inside and finish the job, because the tunnel would have sheared him right off.” That’s what he’d said, anyway; Bucky imagined it had been a hell of a sight worse than that.

“You ready, or you wanna take a break? That was a brisk and terrifying adventure, be nice to sit for a while in the bone-chilling cold before we strap on the snowshoes.”

Bucky turned to him and grinned. “Weenie.” He picked up the rope for the sled and started off, Sam grumbling darkly behind him. All of this was theoretical, anyway, he didn’t remember what it looked like from this vantage, the images he saw were mostly still shots, freeze-framed in his terror. His map was made up of latitude and longitude and grid points and Steve’s grief-tinted memories.

After they’d walked a while, he saw the tunnel, softened by the opaque layer of mist that was coming in now that the sun was on the opposite side of the peaks. “This must be it,” Bucky said quietly, consulting the grid again, and they were nearly dead on.

The river was a thin dark line from up here. What had he looked like to Steve, then, falling away from him, reaching out as if he could still grab hold of something and save himself? Did Steve see his terror, or had he fallen too far too fast for that? Images cascaded down through Bucky’s memory, an avalanche, a landslide, tumbling until they settled, finally, at their angle of repose.

The cold breeze numbed his face, but his eyes and throat felt hot. All of a sudden Sam’s hand was around his right wrist, pulling his glove off. “I got you,” was all he said, and Bucky swayed a little but let Sam keep his grip—he was taking his pulse, Bucky realized, but it was unexpectedly pleasant to be touched, to feel Sam’s warm skin against his own as they stared down at the place he’d died.

 

* * *

 

At least Barnes didn’t do Sam the disservice of telling him he was fine, because—that shit was just not on, he hated all the _I’m fine_ s. It was clear from the time they’d set foot on solid ground once more—Christ, if he never climbed up a waterfall again it would be too soon—that he was noticeably not okay. But it was pretty much what Sam had expected so he gave Bucky room, let him make the decisions of when and where to go.

He’d been getting progressively more distant almost since the moment they’d deplaned and he’d seen the snow. It hadn’t occurred to Sam that he’d waited so long after he’d first had this idea to make sure the landscape wouldn’t look exactly like the wintry one he’d seen on that last op, and once they got here, the snow had really fucked with his plans. Fucked with his brain, too. Sam had really, really wanted to try the wings out rather than rely on snowshoes and crampons and ice axes, but Bucky had favored him with a condescending glare and said, “We find out your wings ice up at that altitude or you get wind shear and we freefall, are you gonna be the one sitting there going, ‘Welp, sure wish we had us some of them snowshoes or crampons right about now’?” He’d loudly and lengthily sucked his teeth and pulled a face, and Sam had thought _god save me from these reckless asshole supersoldiers with something to prove_.

But now Bucky’s face was drained of color, anxiety written in his body language, and Sam got the sense that he was gonna pitch forward over the edge any minute now. He took Bucky’s glove off and wrapped his hand around his wrist, taking his pulse, even though he hadn’t thought to actually find out what the guy’s normal resting heart rate was beforehand. Rookie move, but whether it was usually slower or faster than a normal person’s, this was out of control. If Bucky passed out and fell _again_ Sam could catch him—theoretically—but it wouldn’t matter because he’d be a dead man as soon as Steve found out anyhow.

So he decided to hold on to his wrist for as long as he’d let him, which—well, apparently was a long time. Barnes made no effort to extract his arm, maybe even found the touch comforting, and wasn’t that a trip.

“I assume you’ll want to head down there,” Sam said into the chilling air of the canyon, a faint echo of his words carrying away. “But I thought maybe we could wait till morning, if that sounds good. We could head over to the tunnel, set up camp just inside.”

Bucky took a deep breath and nodded—not making eye contact yet turned slightly toward Sam, he could draw Bucky back from the edge with just the lightest tug. “How come they let all these tracks and tunnels go to hell like this?”

“Nazis and Hydra commandeered a lot of existing lines for themselves, it was kind of their own personal railway to Schmidt’s factories, the place where the Valkyrie was being built. Easier to move us prisoners around by rail than by road. After the war, the locals probably didn’t want anything to do with ’em. Didn’t need to, anyway, all these new lines were going in.” The tunnel was—creepy and cold and damp, just what Sam would expect, but the ground was flat and it was protected from the wind.

They silently set up the tent, made dinner, and got ready for sleep, and Sam wondered if he should skip sending Nervous Nelly an update when Bucky said, “It’s okay if you want to call Steve or send him a message.”

“Do you want to talk to him?”

Barnes stared at his hands. “Nah. Maybe later.”

“When we get down there tomorrow, I’d like to try using the wings, if that’s okay. I wanna see how they perform. We might be able to do some recon for your resting point faster if I can fly.”

Bucky nodded, busied himself with organizing the pitons and anchors and ice screws they’d probably need tomorrow, and Sam noticed he was doing that finger tapping thing again—touching his thumb to each finger, over and over. Counting something, his lips moving ever so slightly in some kind of self-care chant, or maybe a mnemonic; it wasn’t his place to ask.

He considered stepping outside, giving Steve a call, but watching Barnes now, he figured it was better to stay close—he opened up the mail app instead.

_So this email is a little harder to send than the text, everything’s okay but, well. We climbed a waterfall today—can I please never do that again? Barnes is really good at this shit but it was terrifying—and a bunch of rock faces and we’re here at the spot where he likely fell from the train, the tunnel you mentioned you went into after he’d fallen. It’s hard to tell for sure with you guys (plz can you tell me what your normal resting heart rate is so I have a baseline?) but it seemed like his heart rate was off the charts and he looked pale and drawn. I think everything was—maybe esoteric to him before? And shit feels really real up here, in these mountains and this snow and ice._

_But I think he’s ready to push on, you know how he is. There’s that focus, that stillness in him, and he’s processing it all right now, so I don’t know if he’s ready yet to leave you a message. Tomorrow we’ll head down the canyon to the spot where he likely landed, and then see if we can figure out where he came to rest. That is such a weird thing to write, you know? Shit, this whole thing is really weird._

_I hope you’re doing okay, Steve, I don’t know if you’ll get this for a while yet, but feel free to ping me back. I’m keeping an eye on him, he knows I’m here to listen if he wants to talk (like that’ll happen with either of you, ever). You can say whatever you need to say, hit me up._

His finger hovered over the Send button for a while, wondering if he should rewrite the message; finally he pressed it. Barnes had his back to Sam now, tucked down into his sleeping bag, and Sam switched off the lamp. Not expecting a message back from Steve, at least till later, but he felt the buzz of the phone.

_Thanks for this, Sam. I really appreciate it. Thank you for being the friend he needs. Listen, we’ve been doing a little searching, deep web stuff and chatter, to see if there was anything related to you guys that might be Hydra. And there has been a spike in activity in some areas since you first landed, so just—be careful, okay? Keep a weather eye out and don’t let Bucky get overconfident that nobody’s noticed._

_And tell him I’m not playing mumblety-peg, but I’m not stalking him, either._

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Of course they were halfway down the canyon wall when it all went fubar and Sam figured Bucky was gonna be the first person in history to die twice in the same spot.

The morning had started out perfect, so why not?—sun shining clean and sharp above them, lighting the mist that filled the valley with a spectral glow, the peaks nosing their way out of the fog. It was gorgeous in a way that made Sam almost forget his dislike of mountains, a photographer’s wet dream, and if it hadn’t been the place where Bucky Barnes had died—and Steve had lost his whole world—Sam would have classified it as one of the most breathtaking places he’d ever been.

They were making good progress when Bucky’s head suddenly jerked up and he said, “Helos,” and Sam’s blood ran cold. A brief hopeful moment where he thought _maybe Steve and Natasha found out there was a threat and this was the arrival of the Seventh Cavalry_. His second thought was _avalanche_ but he’d had that myth beaten out of him in training up in Alaska and Colorado, but his third thought was _they were fucked, fucked, fucked_.

Within seconds Sam could see the faint outline of the birds that only Barnes had heard, filtered through the fog line they were below instead of that clear blue Alpine Mountain High—two of them—and he said, “I’m gonna call in the cavalry,” though what the hell good that would do at this point, with them almost on them, he didn’t know. It would be hours till anyone in New York could be here, even if it was Stark in his suit or Thor flying on a wing and a hammer.

“Okay, this looks bad.” Sam was to Bucky’s right, just below him, and he realized he was pulling hard on the rope in his anxiety.

“They’re just Little Birds. That’s nothing, I can take care of six guys and a coupla pilots. I got this, don’t worry,” Bucky called back over his shoulder, and he cut the sled loose to send it sailing down the wall, out of sight in the mist filling the canyon. The two choppers dropped down over the peak and hovered above the old railroad tracks—they’d seen their tent, plain as day—and three guys each were fast-roping out of them, rifles at hand. For some reason only one of the choppers had a minigun on it, but one gun was still enough to turn him and Barnes into hamburger, so it wasn’t exactly comforting. Sam was really kind of pissed that he’d let Bucky talk him out of testing the wings’ performance before now.

There wasn’t time to reach for the phone, anyway, because the Hydra—Sam was assuming Hydra, but they could be anybody—guys were hitting the ground and pulling off their heavy gloves so they could commence firing, following the line of their ropes. It was probably easier for him and Bucky to see them than it was for them to see down into the glare of the mist, but they’d definitely left a nice fat trail of crumbs. Before Sam had a chance to open up the wings, Bucky was deflecting bullets with that metal arm, digging out a SIG Sauer from a cargo pocket in his pants at the same time. He was able to drive some of the guys away from the edge, using that couple of seconds to shoot his rope in half and then he was falling back, firing again. He was falling

he was falling

falling.

Sam’s heart was in his throat and oh shit, Barnes was falling again.

Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. His training kicked in; Sam yanked his combat knife out of its sheath and cut the rope to the second harness, so he was falling, too. With a hard smack, Sam engaged the repulsors—if they’re gonna ice up, guess we’ll find out now, he thought, smug about proving Bucky wrong even as he was terrified—and flexed his shoulders, the wings folding into dive position as he arced backward toward Bucky.

“Don’t you fucking shoot me!” Sam bellowed, because the fog was refracting the sunlight just enough that he wasn’t sure if Bucky would see him; neither of them had their glacier glasses on. He swooped under Bucky, reaching for his outstretched arm, and yanked hard at an angle so he could pull them under cover of the much thicker mist down below. The wings spread, just like they should have, he jerked and listed sideways, but Bucky was smart—shit but he was smart—he arched his back up like he was using a dolphin kick to hook a leg over Sam’s legs, right up against Sam’s ass, and that kept them from spinning long enough for Sam to pull them under control.

Bullets still indiscriminately zipped past them, all around, until one hit Bucky in the top of the right shoulder, the impact of which yanked them sideways. “Head to your nine,” Bucky yelled over the roar of the engines and the wind, the hail of bullets mercifully died down to a few pings here and there, and he was able to take them to the ground. They landed hard on the rocky floor, snow puffing up in their faces. To their twelve he could see the sled, its red cover bold against the midnight blue of the river and the pure white snow. Christ, he hoped the guns were intact; the sled was half in the water and they wouldn’t be much use to them if they were wet.

“Why did you do that?” Sam glared; he was done, he was so ten thousand percent done with this death-defying crazy-ass supersoldier bullshit.

“I knew you’d catch me.” Blood pulsed out of Bucky’s shoulder but he was grinning, almost laughing. “Fuck me sideways.” Oh my god, oh my god: this from the guy who’d been convinced the wings would ice over. Sam wanted to claw his own fucking face off.

Sam stared at him, pole-axed; he remembered Steve shouting “gonna need a ride” and jumping off the helicarrier before he even knew if Sam could catch him, hauling the dead weight of two hundred and forty pounds of Captain America beef up against the velocity of his fall. These repulsors were an improvement on the old wings, but not by that much, and Sam leaned over, hands on knees, trying to resist the urge to throw up. What the ever-loving fuck was wrong with these two?

“Wings okay?” Bucky asked softly, and began a trudge up toward the sled.

“So far. Probably helps that we’re at a lower altitude.” He didn’t think it was the greatest plan to go get the sled, that just put them closer to Hydra, but this was Barnes’s province, he was the team leader, although—“You break team like that again, I’m gonna pummel you with ’em. Seriously, do not _ever_ do anything like that again.”

“Sorry,” Bucky said, cocking his head, quizzical. “I haven’t...had to explain myself in a long time.”

What was there to even say to that? “Let me see your shoulder.” Though they nearly whispered, it sounded like they were shouting, the way the sound bounced around on these walls. Everything was distorted and weird.

“No time. We gotta get some guns, I got a few grenades in there. They’ll be down here soon.”

“Will they take the choppers in? They must have infra-red.”

Bucky shook his head. “Small as they are, it’s dangerous in this type of canyon. But those fellas are gonna rope down a hell of a lot faster than we were.” He picked up the pace and they reached the sled, and Bucky began throwing everything out—food, climbing gear, clothing—to grab the machine gun and ammo belt he’d brought, tossing ammo for Sam’s wing guns to him, and picking up—shit, he really actually brought _grenades_? “I don’t have a lot of ammo. We need to get up to those helos while they’re on their way down to find us. Use this fog to our advantage. Can you carry me and all this weight?”

“Do we have a choice?”

“Suppose not.”

Bucky tried a smile, but it failed to impress Sam. “Bring me up next to one of ’em—the one with the gun—and throw me. I just need one, I’ll use their gun to get rid of the other and we’ll fly down and pick the climbers off.”

“You just said it was a bad idea to fly a helo in this canyon.” His voice sounded strained and high even to his own ears.

“It’d be a bad idea for _them_ ,” and his grin was so cheeky Sam wanted to cry. He’d had no idea, no idea at all: Barnes was every bit as terrible as Steve, he’d totally been lying about how he’d spent half his life chasing around after Steve the way you’d chase a dog that had slipped its leash and loved to go after cars. Neither one of them had the sense god gave a turnip.

“All right,” Sam said, hopelessly, because this was a terrible plan and they were doomed.

“You wanna call Steve, don’t you?” Bucky pulled the shooting glove on his metal hand tight with his teeth.

“The problem presents as rather immediate.” The corners of his mouth pulled down. “I wish before we did this, though, you’d let me look at that shoulder.”

“I’ll heal,” but Sam rather doubted that was happening anytime soon; the blood had drenched the sleeve of his gray parka maroon, it had obviously gone in deep.

“Are you really certain you can do this?” Sam asked him, grabbing Bucky’s arm and making Bucky look him dead in the eyes.

“Yeah. But...” He glanced away, over to the wall.

“But what?” Maybe he didn’t have faith that Sam could do this, that Sam had it in him to get them out of here.

“It’s gonna mess up my hair.” The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitched up.

Sam closed his eyes, willing himself not to fly on out of here and leave Bucky to fend for himself. “All right, let’s go,” he said, and hit the engines. They soared upward until they hit the line where the fog had feathered away; he swept past the peak above the tunnel where one of the choppers flew in a pattern, going grid by grid. He could see the pilot catch sight of their shadow, so he swooped low and did as Bucky instructed, using his velocity and throwing him toward the open door, pulling his own guns out to cover him.

Bucky flew ungracefully, catching the edge of the open door, legs splayed wide as he tried to hold on when the helicopter juddered and tilted in response to his weight. The pilot had already moved for a sidearm but Bucky swung the rifle up in his other hand and bashed the pilot in the head, ripped him out of the seat, and hurled him like a discarded toy out into the canyon. It was just like when he’d ripped the steering wheel out of Sam’s hands, that cold, focused, terrifying strength, but as the chopper spun sideways Bucky clambered in and threw Sam a jaunty wave. Jesus god. Barnes righted the bird, turned around, and flew straight at the other chopper, the minigun on the side spitting bullets like a swarm of angry bees.

Sam dove down below the fog line—there were three guys right in front of him, a perfect line, they’d heard everything and had their guns up. “Shit!” he yelped, flipping back in a zigzag so he could sweep the rock face. They fell limp on their ropes, puppets whose strings had been cut, when the sound of the other chopper crashing—please, please, let it be the other chopper—filled the air with a roar.

Very carefully, Sam maneuvered in a downward pattern, he was sure as soon as he spotted them they would have spotted him and he was a dead man flying, but there was Bucky, bringing the helo in fast, the rotors’ wash pushing the mist away. It was obvious why the pilots hadn’t flown down here: the drafts made the back end whip back and forth, but yeah, Bucky was a good pilot. The Hydra operatives were almost at the bottom now, and Bucky saw them at the same time Sam did. He turned the minigun on them, shooting fish in a barrel. The two of them hovered there, waiting, waiting, just to see what might happen next. But nothing did, and Sam relaxed incrementally.

Bucky landed carefully in the least rocky spot along the canyon floor; Sam followed him down, heart still thundering in his chest, breath aching like splinters in his lungs. They cut down and maneuvered the bodies into a pile, but then Bucky leaped backwards, his hand going up, and said, “This one’s alive.”

Sam knelt, there was a thready pulse but it looked like only one bullet had caught him, just under the armpit at the edge of his armor. Before he could say anything, Bucky jammed his metal fingers into the guy’s mouth. “What the hell!” Sam shouted. The look Barnes gave him was—aggravated, or impatient, and then Sam remembered: the suicide teeth.

Leaning in, Bucky said, “Who sent you?” and the guy actually laughed around his fingers. “Who do you work for?”

It was hard to understand him, what with a mouthful of metal weapon fingers, but it sounded like he was saying, “Sputnik.” When nothing happened, he spat another word in Russian.

Barnes laughed, brittle and high. “Yeah, that don’t work anymore. Once more with feeling, who sent you?”

“You think they’re not gonna notice the Asset is active all of a sudden? Send someone out to fix your little wagon? Fuck you.” Man, these guys really just had no respect for the reputation of the Winter Soldier, that was for sure. You could almost admire their cojones, if they weren’t a bunch of fascist genocidal assholes.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Bucky asked again, but the guy’s eyes rolled up and he seized; before Sam could do anything he was gone.

“Does it matter who they work for?” Sam asked.

“There were different factions...following different protocols. Some of them will want me dead if they know for a fact I’m still alive. Some of them will just want me back.”

“Let’s get up top.” Sam looked around them. “I’m sorry about this. What this is doing to your plans.”

Bucky shrugged. “Least we got here.”

Once they were up top and away from the wreckage, Sam challenged, “Now will you let me look at your shoulder?” He was pretty certain there were bone fragments in there, but Bucky wouldn’t tolerate him digging around in it any more than necessary to remove the bullet. Sam bandaged it as best he could, and really looked at Bucky—his hair wild and his face splattered with blood, and Sam thought he must look a fright himself. The sheer shock of everything came rushing up to him, knocking him off balance and he was amazed he hadn’t pissed himself when Bucky’d fallen, when he’d thrown Bucky at a fucking helicopter, right above the place where he’d died.

They’d loaded some of their gear on the helo so Sam dug out their canteens and handed one wordlessly to Bucky.

Bucky splashed water on his face first, wiping some of the blood off with his sleeve. His eyes were—Sam didn’t even know what that was, fear and adrenaline high and grief, he thought, maybe. By the time he took a drink his hands were shaking; both of their hands were shaking. The fog was clearing away now, and the carnage lay beneath them. If they’d been able to follow the river to the southwest, they’d probably have found Bucky’s resting place, and Sam wanted to ask what next, did they leave or call for backup? He was waiting for Bucky to tell him what to do.

When that didn’t happen, Sam asked, “Are you okay? Because you said you weren’t doing this anymore, you weren’t going to fight.”

Bucky shook his head. “You do what you have to when you have to.”

Sam got out some energy bars and handed two over.

After a long silence while he ate, Bucky said, “I think I know where they came from.” Not that that wasn’t important in the overall scheme of things, but it sure as hell wasn’t the question Sam wanted an answer for.

“Yeah?”

“Buzludzha,” Bucky offered, tucking the empty wrappers into his pocket, staring down at the canyon floor.

“Gesundheit,” Sam said, and Bucky snorted, drained the rest of his canteen.

“It’s in Bulgaria. It’s a long distance to travel, too long for those helos, but I think that’s where they might have started from.” His voice was small, far away.

“What’s there that’s important enough to come all the way out here?” Sam asked, weary and really ready to call in the rest of the Avengers so they could get the fuck out of Dodge. “What’s in Bulgaria?”

Bucky stared up at the sun, his face blank, his blue eyes blinking against the harsh light. “The place where they made me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Forget Your Past. Bucky and Sam take a side trip to Bulgaria; mistakes are made.


	3. Forget Your Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the moment Steve had gotten Bucky back he’d been preparing to lose him again.

“Captain Rogers.”

Steve had dozed off, head resting on his forearms on the dining table. The sound of JARVIS’s voice startled him upright and he sent his iced coffee flying straight for the laptop screen; he caught it before it hit and laughed with embarrassment, muttering, “Saved by my catlike reflexes.”

“Quite,” JARVIS responded—Steve was always amazed that an artificial intelligence could suggest a droll arched eyebrow so efficiently. “Something urgent has come up that I believe you should see. Might I suggest, though, that you take a few deep breaths first. I know this is an...emotional subject.” The TV screen lit up with satellite images of eastern Austria piling up one after the other in a collage, each subsequent image zooming in further and further to the grid point where Sam and Bucky were. And there were—Christ, two small helicopters and—

“When were these taken?” Steve struggled to keep his voice neutral, his mind raced with panic till he was dizzy, had to reach for the edge of the table to steady himself. A succession of new images sped by rapid-fire, like a picture flipbook, showing Steve the progression of movement: the Little Birds taking position, the Hydra operatives fast-roping out, and then firing down into a fog-filled canyon, exactly where Sam and Bucky would be. The Hydra operatives then abseiled down the canyon beneath the fog line, right on top of what must have been Bucky and Sam’s route, it was hard to tell exactly.

Natasha—he had to call Natasha, or Clint, or Tony. Somebody. They had to get in the air and over to Austria as fast as they could. “Satellite One images appeared three minutes ago.” Time felt suspended, Steve was weightless and blank, waiting for something to happen on the screen, waiting for—he wasn’t sure what: Bucky’s death once again, or Sam’s, or maybe both of them taken captive, and Steve wasn’t sure that Bucky wouldn’t prefer death over being taken by Hydra once more. Yet the screen stubbornly remained frozen and all he could think about was the crushing heat in his chest and the pulse hammering in his ears.

“Captain, even for your metabolism, your heart rate is quite—” and Steve cut him off with an “I know” and drew in a deep breath, released it, then drew it in again.

In the top right quadrant, directly above the tunnel Sam had mentioned they were camped by, there was finally movement: a dark speck above what was likely to be their tent—Sam and Bucky, midair. “We have switched over to the second satellite,” JARVIS said and abruptly Steve was watching live images, stuttering and pixelated, but live. It appeared as if Sam was carrying Bucky up and around a peak and then—Jesus, was he _throwing_ Bucky at one of the helos? The helicopter lost control, tilting to the side before someone dropped through the air. It couldn’t be Bucky—oh thank god—because Sam swept down and disappeared once again below the fog. The second helo, coming in from the left, flew straight on at the one Bucky must be in, but it veered suddenly to its ten o’clock in a jerky series of partially loading images, smashing tail-first into the mountainside.

For Christ’s sake, _Bucky. Sam_. The helicopter whipped wildly back and forth before it shot down into the canyon and all Steve could think was how dangerous it would be down there, he had no idea what was happening below that fog line and this was so goddamn typical of Bucky to rush forward with no real plan and get himself in trouble, seventy years of mind control apparently hadn’t done a thing to change that. Steve’s stomach did violent somersaults and he thought for a wild second he might projectile vomit right at the TV screen. “Shall I contact Mr. Stark or Agent Romanov for you?”

Swallowing and attempting to get his nerves under control, Steve said, “No, just—hang on a sec, let me—wait,” and after the most interminable minutes of Steve’s new life, the helicopter reappeared and landed on the ground. The images stalled as the feed jumped, what looked like Bucky exiting the pilot’s side, a few seconds later Sam. They pulled something out of the right side and then just—they fucking _sat down_ , as if nothing had happened. Son of a _bitch_ , Steve thought, swamped by relief and rage and fear all at the same time, like a punch to his heart by Bucky’s metal arm.

They needed Steve, they needed the team, so he picked up his phone to call Nat but then found himself staring down at it. Why wasn’t Sam calling Steve or—what the fuck, why wasn’t _Bucky_ calling him? What the hell were they waiting for?

His head spun, he stalked to the balcony and whipped the doors open, stood at the railing, his fingers gripping the metal as it groaned and bent and it felt good, the way the twisting steel bit into his skin. From the moment Steve had gotten Bucky back he’d been preparing to lose him again; he recalled waking the next morning in that hotel room in Cluj to an empty bed and the part of him that had come back to life in Bucky’s arms had died all over again.

_Though Bucky’d arrived, apparently, with nothing, when Steve sat up in bed he realized the room had been tidied, as someone would who wanted to leave no trace. He threw the covers off but before he could get to his feet Bucky was standing in the bathroom doorway, watching Steve with that scrutinizing gaze, as if peeling him like an onion, down through all his layers till he found what he wanted inside. “Hey, sorry,” Bucky said, shaking his head, “I just...I’m a little ripe, you know, I’ve been on the move for a while. Was gonna use your—have a shower, shave. Got deadly morning breath.”_

_“No, you’re—you’re perfect,” Steve said, and crossed to him in two long strides and kissed him to prove it. Bucky pressed his forehead to Steve’s, circled his wrists with his strong fingers; the metal left him shivering or maybe it was just the kiss._

_“I didn’t bring anything, can I borrow your stuff?” Bucky asked, the words breathed into the ticklish skin underneath his ear._

_Steve said, “Let me,” and took his razor out of his dopp kit with a jar of shaving soap, which everyone made fun of him for using but he knew Bucky would get why he still preferred it. Bucky parked his butt at the edge of the counter and watched him whip up some lather with a look of amused curiosity; they used to do this, sometimes, shave each other, most often when they were too hung-over to reliably do it themselves, and it had been Bucky who’d taught Steve how to shave in the first place._

_His left leg snugged up between Bucky’s thighs—god, his thighs were incredible, his legs had always been long and gorgeous but now his thighs were like tree trunks of pure sex and they made Steve want to swoon—and Bucky sighed raggedly, though his eyes never left Steve’s as he soaked the brush in hot water, lathered it up, and spread it slowly along Bucky’s jaw, his cheeks, down over his throat. Bucky pulled a little brown elastic from his pocket and reached to tie his hair back as Steve put the brush down and picked up the safety razor, his fingers betraying his nerves with a weak tremble. There was so much heat between them it sucked the air out of the room, left Steve dizzy, tilting, and he could only sway there with his dick pressed against Bucky’s hip and Bucky’s fingers settled on Steve’s hips like a claim. Head tilted back, exposing his neck in a show of trust that managed to nearly stop Steve’s heart._

_“God, that smells so good—bay rum, right?” Bucky asked with the hesitation of someone who couldn’t yet count on remembering things correctly._

_“Yeah,” Steve said, and leaned in to carefully stroke the razor down Bucky’s skin, gently following the angles and planes of his face, dipping in to the little cleft in his chin, slow, slow, until it felt like they were standing inside a bonfire. He was so breathtakingly beautiful, he’d always been the most beautiful thing Steve had ever seen, no painting or landscape or sunset could compare. When he finished with the razor, Steve wet a washcloth and wiped the last bits of lather off Bucky’s face; the temperature of the space in between left them stealing only short, shallow breaths. Aware that he was hard against Bucky’s hip, Steve pressed tighter, ran the back of his hand along Bucky’s neck to undo the last two buttons of the Henley he wore, dragged his fingers along the clavicle._

_Eyes closed, Bucky gripped Steve’s hips harder; Steve moved his hands up under Bucky’s shirt, spread his palm across his belly, mouth locked on his soft, moist lips, when a quake suddenly shook Bucky’s entire body. Had Bucky—could he have—he _had_ , he’d come pressed against Steve’s thigh. Small shivers wracked him as Steve clutched his face, but Bucky turned violently away, his shame written in the hard set of his jaw and dark eyes, and choked out, “Sorry—I—sorry,” as he tried to peel Steve’s hands off him. _

_“No, Buck, no, please don’t.” Steve couldn’t bear to see him ashamed, of course he’d been overwhelmed, it was such a natural response: he’d been starved for this for so long, touch-starved and love-starved and pleasure-starved, and Steve kissed him, held his face tight with both hands so Bucky couldn’t pull away from him, wanted him to open to his hunger and take everything that he needed, everything Steve wanted to give._

_“The flesh is weak,” Bucky said with a bitter, humiliated laugh, and Steve pressed kisses to the spot under his ear that used to drive him wild and insisted, “No, it’s not. I didn’t think how...intense this would be for you.” The warm dampness against his thigh only worked to make Steve harder—he ached for Bucky’s skin against his, touched him everywhere, shoved his shirt up and unbuttoned the jeans and then they both were peeling the rest off each other with frantic, jerky hands._

_He turned the shower on and pulled Bucky by the wrist inside, caressing, kissing, stroking, allowing Bucky to luxuriate in being touched, letting him indulge in touching Steve wherever, however he wanted. He massaged the cruel edges of the scars around Bucky’s metal arm, worked to unknot the muscles above and adjacent to it, explored the familiar and unfamiliar alike. Hands following the sweet curve of buttocks, fingers closed around velvet hardness, and Steve in front of Bucky, on his knees, at worship._

For—Steve didn’t even know how long it was, maybe a half hour at least, he’d stood out on the balcony, reining in the panic until the phone buzzed and he answered on the first ring “Sam!” and it was barely a volume level below screaming.

“Hey, so, uh...” Sam said slowly, it was hard to tell if his voice was calm or he was wounded. “Something happened—”

“No shit,” Steve barked.

“Yeah,” he sighed, “we figured you’d been keeping an eye on us. You got satellite?”

“What took you so long to call?” It wasn’t Sam’s fault, he tried to tell himself, and pressed the bridge of his nose hard.

“We, uh, we have something to discuss. With you. A change of—” There was a noise like a burst of static, Sam’s voice became muffled and distant, followed by Bucky’s voice and what sounded as if they were—they were fighting over the phone like a couple of five-year-olds over Legos.

“I knew it. I knew you were spying on me.” Bucky didn’t sound angry so much as vindicated, maybe a bit amused.

“What did you expect? The deep web has been lit up like a pinball machine since you resurfaced and I’m not just gonna sit here and—and—”

“Twiddle your big fat thumbs?”

“You _ass_.”

God, Bucky had the nerve to chuckle. “Steve, I’m okay. We’re okay. We can handle things, haven’t I proved that to you yet?” A little icon flashed on his phone so he hit the view screen button and there was Bucky’s face: yes, amused, smug even.

“You fell, didn’t you. You fell again, down beneath the fog.” It all rushed out of him in a torrent, as if he was spitting up all the sorrow and guilt he’d swallowed so many years ago: “I never went back there to the base of the mountains, never searched for your body and I could have. Could have stayed or gone back, climbed down there and looked for you but I didn’t, I _didn’t_. I let myself be talked out of it, even though I couldn’t really believe you were dead but it was easier—to let them tell me I was needed and there was no time. I should have looked for you. You would never have let me go without searching, without _proof_.” Steve shook with the violent memory that tore through him and he felt the wind freeze the tears on his lashes, heard the train wheels churning along, saw the lead-grey sky behind his outstretched empty hand.

The tears stung, hot and sharp behind his eyes, and he closed them so that Bucky wouldn’t see him cry again, not over this, so that he wouldn’t burden Bucky with the very guilt and anger he’d run away from.

“Hey, hey, come on,” Bucky said softly, coaxing Steve to open his eyes, and he stared at Bucky’s tiny, fuzzy image on the screen. “It’s okay, Steve, you did the only thing you could. No one knew. No one could know. You think I would have come back with you if I blamed you?”

All he could do was sniffle and wipe his nose on his sleeve. Christ, this was humiliating. There was such a soft, fond look on Bucky’s face, and then he said with infinite tenderness that Steve didn’t think he deserved, “You know, I forgive you. You didn’t do anything wrong, but if that’s what you need to hear, then listen to me now: I forgive you.”

Steve tried a wan smile, but it was pretty half assed. “Did you—did you find what you were looking for?”

“We kinda got interrupted. You know Hydra. But—listen, I know you’re not gonna like this, but I want to take a side trip since we’re here. I’m pretty sure I know where some of the rats on that sinking ship went to, so I’m gonna do a little recon.”

Steve stared at him, pole-axed.

“And before you object, it’s just recon, nothin’ I didn’t do a hundred times on my own back in the war or after Insight. Sam insists on coming with me to keep me in line.”

Keeping the hurt out of his voice was nearly impossible, but Steve tried not to whine. “You still don’t want me there.”

Bucky sighed. “You know how I told you the process to make me into him took—a long time?”

Steve nodded. “Process” sounded so mundane. Like brutality and torture and experimentation were just nuisances, paperwork to be filed.

“I’m going to where a lot of it happened. I think it’d be pretty hard on you. It could be hard on me, too, so...” His attempt at sparing himself from Steve’s moral indignation was transparent, and Steve almost laughed. Without any segue Bucky changed the subject: “Do you remember that awful place you lived in near Saint Ann’s? How I’d throw pebbles at your window till you snuck out to meet me?”

“Yeah,” Steve said and ran his hand through his hair, wiped the back of fingers over his eyes. It was like Bucky was gentling a spooked horse or something. “After you got off work. We’d go up the block and sit on the hood of someone’s car and talk about stuff—I don’t remember what, but I’m sure it was very important. Sometimes you snuck hooch from god only knew where.”

“I remember one night you wouldn’t even change out of your pajamas, you were tired and you just threw a jacket on over a robe and you were so brave that night, you kissed me. All that time and I’d wanted to kiss you so many times, but you were always the brave one and you leaned over and planted a big wet smacker right on me like it was no big thing.”

On the night of his graduation Bucky’s family had taken them to dinner at Bucky’s favorite restaurant, a chop house just over the river, and Steve spent the entire evening staring at him: the most beautiful thing in the world, he was startled each time he looked at Bucky, how perfect and gorgeous and _sublime_ he was and Steve had resolved that night that the next time they were alone, really alone he’d take advantage of the gift of darkness and kiss Bucky, no matter how dangerous the outcome could be. “Not brave, just an idiot in love.”

“The damnedest thing, though, wasn’t it, us back then? When throwing rocks at your window meant that I loved you. When the bravest thing you could do was to kiss someone. And we thought that was the only thing that mattered.”

There was a light in Bucky’s eyes Steve hadn’t seen since...before the war, the light that sparked his blue eyes on those nights sitting on strangers’ cars, before they’d known the world was waiting to eat them alive. “I’m still trying to work all this stuff out, I got a lot to work out. It’d be easy to walk away and forget about it, or maybe easy for someone else, but the thing is, I’m still pretty nuts about you. I want to make it safe for you and me and for your friends, I want to find these guys and then sit back and watch while you take ’em out. We’ll make popcorn.” Bucky sighed. “But you gotta be a rock for me, okay? You’re the bravest fucker I’ve ever known and I need that now.”

“Thought I was the angriest fucker you’ve ever known.” He drew in a deep breath. “Go,” Steve said softly. “Do you what you have to do.”

Sam came back on the line, part of his face visible as he side-eyed Bucky, pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at Bucky, and they talked about the plans for the next few days, precisely where they were headed. By the time they rang off Steve had settled into a kind of calm despair; when he turned to head back inside he was startled to find Natasha leaning back against the glass door in her sushi pajama pants and a fluffy sleep cardigan, arms wrapped around her chest, one fuzzy-slippered ankle crossed over the other.

“How did you hear?” Steve asked, shoulders drooping.

“JARVIS was a little concerned you could bust an aorta.” She regarded him carefully, checking him over herself, before adding, “So they’re not coming home, I take it.”

“They’re going to...Bulgaria, I guess. Bucky said it was the place where he was made into the Soldier,” and Steve thought he might gag on those words.

“Huh.” The gears in her mind were turning, it was always fascinating to watch her think, she was so different from him—spy versus soldier, but that was also what made them a great team.

“He said he forgives me,” Steve blurted; he was always confessing to her lately.

“That’s not what you need, though, is it?” she asked, because Steve was always so transparent to her now.

“It helps.”

“You know, it’s okay to bleed sometimes. It’s okay to let yourself fall to pieces and ask someone to help put them back together.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Give me till tomorrow,” and she didn’t say for what, but Steve found he didn’t care, really, he was happy to let her plot and scheme to his advantage. Natasha pushed away from the glass and stood on tiptoes to kiss him in the old Russian way, disappearing through his living room.

Steve stared down at his phone—he’d snapped a still image of Bucky while they’d talked. He was always taking his picture now: Steve had almost as many photos as he did drawings of Bucky, but he could never have enough. In his memories Bucky’d had a wild light, a force about him that Steve’s drawings could never fully capture; even photos couldn’t do justice to it, at least back then in black and white. He saw that light now, sometimes, and was obsessed with trying to capture it once more, to keep him always, but it was just as elusive. Steve threw the phone at the couch and went downstairs to the gym so he could beat and break things until his hands bled.

 

* * *

 

“No. With a side of hell no. And a generous helping of hell to the freaking no. Crowned by a little red cherry of absofuckinglutely no.”

Bucky side-eyed Sam, pressed his lips together in a tight line. “Sounds like a no, then,” Bucky was coming to understand.

“Steve will murder me dead if anything else happens to you.” Sam pressed the heel of his palm against his forehead. They were sitting in a little café in Gabrovo, a window seat so they could keep an eye on the surroundings, drinking a lot of stout, thick coffee and stuffing themselves full of pastries.

“Thought this was supposed to be my life.” Bucky appreciated Sam’s concern, but he wasn’t asking permission here. It was pretty much the same response Sam had given him back in Austria when Bucky’d said he wanted to check out Buzludzha, and look: here they both were now.

“It is. You know I support what you’re trying to do for yourself, I think wanting closure is a healthy thing. But going inside is an insane idea. That’s kicking a hornet’s nest when you’re deathly allergic.”

“Which is why I’m going up there and you’re not.” After the Austria encounter they’d taken the jet to Vienna; it had been Bucky’s intention to send Sam home on a commercial flight while Bucky went to Bulgaria to poke around the old neighborhood, see if he could bring back some intel for Steve. He’d wanted Sam to be safe—this wasn’t his fight or his past to discover. Not to mention Steve would be home spitting fire about it, and having Sam home to calm him down would be...something helpful.

“Look, even taking into account your obvious superhuman abilities, it’s...nuts. You realize they know you’re in Europe, that you could be walking into a trap. You got no idea what they’ll try to spring on you next.”

“Oh, I think I got a pretty good idea.” Bucky sighed. “Look, it wasn’t much more than a bunch of grey rooms and a toilet. By the time they moved me to Moscow, the lab was already on its way to getting mothballed.” Sam didn’t even really know what Bucky was talking about, and he knew he’d have to explain all this to him soon, once Sam couldn’t stand being the cool counselor and broke down and _asked_. “The facility’s not big enough to be that much of a threat to me—and there are tourists who go up there, too, you know—but once I get a sense of what they’re up to, Steve and the team can come in and sweep up. Easy-peasy.”

You’d have thought Bucky was an eight-year-old on his first trip away from his parents. It wasn’t like Bucky didn’t know this was dangerous, but the mountain was waiting for him with its dark secrets—and those were his and his alone.

“Oh, don’t you even.” Sam glared. “This isn’t for Steve’s benefit. I don’t—I can’t pretend to understand what you’re going through, but I know it’s a terrible, terrible idea. And after hanging around Steve all this time, I know from terrible ideas.”

“I’m gonna be fine. It’s just recon, I swear.”

“You are not going up there alone.”

“Now it’s my turn to say hell no. Absolutely not. This is my op.”

“What, do you think I’ll compromise you or something?” Sam challenged.

Bucky had to look away. “Maybe.” A shitty, low blow, especially since Sam was always just trying to help.

“Thanks.” Sam scrunched up his face. “Look, Barnes. We’ve gone this far together, we go the rest of the way.” He threw Bucky a narrow look. “Either that or I tell Steve to get over here and stop you.” So Sam wasn’t above emotional blackmail—good to know.

The best Bucky could do was keep ahead of Hydra, think like the Winter Soldier, as if this was a chess match and plan five moves ahead of them: no one knew this AO like Bucky did.

“If it’s just recon, why are you fighting me so hard on this?” What did Sam think he owed Steve, owed Bucky? He’d sacrificed everything for them, given up his life for a fight that wasn’t even his. How did Bucky keep getting attached to these steadfast, loyal, selfless idiots?

“All right.” Bucky mumbled, because he didn’t know what else to say and the more he fought it, the more his own resolve waned. He finished his coffee, waved at the waitress for another, and stared out the window.

Gabrovo was one of two towns closest to the Buzludzha Monument, and the one Bucky remembered from his early days, so he’d chosen it as a base; it was also large enough that they would be mostly unnoticed. Though it had changed a lot, there was still a quaint Balkan mountain town feeling about it, except—

“You notice anything unusual about some of the tourist types here?” Bucky asked.

Sam followed his gaze out the window. “Oh, you mean like all these really ripped, mid-twenties guys with military haircuts, wearing all black?” Unless tactical gear was the new fleece.

“Hail Hydra,” Bucky said acidly under his breath and Sam flicked some crumbs in his direction.

Sam fanned open the Gabrovo brochure he’d picked up at the visitors center so they would appear to be good little tourists planning to do some mountain climbing. “So this says Gabrovo is famous for its humor. What’s Bulgarian humor like, I wonder?”

“Not particularly funny, if you ask me.”

Sam snorted. “Maybe we ought to head back to the hotel, I feel kinda weirdly exposed here. It’s so painfully white, and I’d prefer not to be the thing that gets you noticed by Hydra.”

“Do you mind if I...” Bucky gestured off toward the square as he and Sam left the café, and Sam cast him a funny glance, concern and suspicion, maybe, but he nodded and zipped up his jacket, tucking chin into collar, before splitting left toward the hotel. There were no steps to retrace here, not really; Bucky’d barely ever set foot in either of the towns that took you up to the mountain, but he didn’t want Sam to see the chaos in his head, the way memories he had never confronted were being pulled back into his mind the way waves pull sand back into the sea.

They’d parked the quinjet in Vienna, Barton and Romanov hastily put together a cover for the Avengers’ presence there, and Bucky found them a plane they could fly to Bulgaria. “I’m not exactly fond of trains,” he told Sam after his perfectly reasonable suggestion that taking a train might make them less conspicuous, just your typical tourists doing some spring climbing. It was funny, though, because as soon as he got to Gabrovo he remembered: he’d been transported to the area from the hospital at the rear lines via railway back in ’45, in the closing days of the war.

He and Sam had landed the small hired plane a few towns over and found an old, ex-military Land Rover they could drive to Gabrovo and hopefully at least a little ways up the mountain. His Bulgarian wasn’t great—he’d been the Asset, he had handlers for all the languages they’d deemed unimportant for him to know—but his German was perfect, and apparently people from all over came through here each year to climb up to the monument; they were no more suspicious than anyone else.

Following the direction he’d seen the Hydra operatives heading led him to a grocery, where he saw them loading cartons into a truck. They didn’t notice anyone was watching them, but why should they? He’d been a ghost for decades, to Russia’s and Hydra’s enemies, and now he was again to probably most of Hydra’s remaining believers. The Soldier was only a threat to them if he was rogue: he would be a kill or capture assignment, no one needed the details. And if capture—well. That wasn’t a possibility.

Bucky waited till the guys headed out of town before turning back to the hotel. Steve would be fuming if he knew about this; he was probably already hidden away somewhere nearby so he could be ready at a moment’s notice for Bucky’s Mayday. He’d sworn on the call the day before that he was _not_ in Europe, Barton had confirmed; Bucky believed him, because Steve was a wretched liar, but he also knew Steve simply couldn’t stay away for long.

Bucky took the long way back to the hotel so he could keep walking, the festering echoes of this place taking up all the space in his head. He still had no real plan other than to look around—which would be a lot easier if he was going alone; he considered sneaking out of the hotel without Sam, but that seemed childish at best, cowardly at worst.

When he’d been on the run, whole weeks had been lost to the sinkhole of recollecting his past. And Steve was...not wrong, entirely, that there was an element of suicide to all this, but it wasn’t until he’d decided to come to Bulgaria that Bucky had comprehended just whose suicide it was: he was killing the Soldier, once and for all. He’d been forced to carry him, this unwanted passenger, all these decades and while Bucky knew he’d never be the person he was before—that the Soldier was a part of him, as much as the metal arm, as much as the scars his body wore—this was not about peace, like Steve believed, but maybe about reclamation. Once he put this to rest, Bucky could become someone else, someone worthy of the love Steve graced him with every day.

“ _I want you to feel this way all the time,” Steve said and dropped to his knees, “to know you deserve it and that it’s yours for the taking.”_

_Ribbons of pleasure unfurled throughout Bucky’s limbs and torso, Steve had untied that knot inside him, he shook and burst with them and the world went white: all his molecules gathered to form this one point of ideal bliss, fingers dug through Steve’s wet hair, his back against the cool tile wall. When Bucky was wracked and spent, Steve rose up in front of him, a secret smile on his red red lips; Bucky remembered him like this in the war, how he’d slide into their tent after a mission, full of wrath and victory and radiance—and love, always so much love—and they’d fuck until they were senseless and their eyes glittered with tears._

_“Steve,” he said, slipped his real hand down between Steve’s legs, but Steve turned Bucky within his arms and gently soaped his skin in long, sensual, painterly strokes, up through to his hair. Steve tipped Bucky’s head back on his shoulder, letting the spray of water wash everything away—the ache in his muscles from a year of running, the dirt of a hundred different cities—and pushed the soap through Bucky’s hair in sweet circles, over and over, and it was like being baptized._

_“Come home with me,” Steve said against the hot skin of his throat, so of course he said yes, because who had he ever been to deny Steve anything: Steve was his weakness, his compulsion, his disease; he wanted Steve inside him, wanted his heavy hard cock and his forget-me-not eyes and his candy-apple mouth. Bucky turned off the water and they stumbled blindly back to the bed with their mouths locked together and hands everywhere at once, dripping wet._

For a long while Bucky stood outside the hotel and indulged in a smoke; even though it was his choice now, he hadn’t really resurrected many of his old habits—just, apparently, Steve. It was funny, Steve believing that Bucky was rejecting him by coming here, because ever since those days in Cluj he couldn’t bear to be away from Steve, it physically hurt when Bucky was anywhere Steve wasn’t. Maybe because now they knew what it really meant to lose one another.

He thought now that he’d made a mistake telling Steve he forgave him: it wasn’t Bucky’s forgiveness that Steve needed, it was his own. Oh, he put on a great front, he always had, but from far away Bucky thought he could see the shape of Steve’s guilt better. All those years alone and Steve had been carrying it quietly, wearing it like a scar, and if Bucky could give him anything, it would be to take that responsibility off his shoulders.

Time to stop dicking around. He stubbed out the cigarette and went upstairs to come up with a plan.

 

* * *

 

They were gonna have to have a talk before Sam went anywhere. Head in the game and all that, because he couldn’t really tell exactly what was going on in Bucky’s brain at this point and Sam might be stupidly ready to risk his life to help him put his demons to rest, but he was going to need a little information before he did it.

From the bathroom he could watch Barnes moving around the room; most of the space was taken up with their gear, but he had a really easy grace as he stepped around everything, arms and legs moving in a loose rhythm, and Sam realized after a bit that Bucky was sort of half dancing to the music on Sam’s iPod. Steve had said that Bucky was a superb dancer, that he’d practically lived at dance halls before and during the war. Sam remained still, studying him in the reflection: a good song, off his favorite playlist, and Bucky seemed completely unconscious of his movements, or at least un-self-conscious; if he knew Sam was watching he’d surely stop. Sam wanted him to just—let loose and enjoy himself.

After a few minutes Sam was aware of his tightly held breath and he let it out, when Bucky glanced up toward the bathroom and froze. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to watch you,” Sam said hastily and stepped into the room. “You seemed so relaxed—I didn’t want to disturb you, I was hoping you’d keep going. Steve always said you were a great dancer.”

“Ah, not the way people dance these days.”

Sam cocked his head, eyebrows climbing his forehead, but Bucky wasn’t going to give anything more. Okay. “So, listen, while you were out, I read up about this place. I know I promised I wasn’t going to ask you to tell me about your feelings, but I kinda need something to go on here. How this place ties in to what happened to you.”

Drawing a deep breath, Bucky made a long-suffering face and sat at the edge of his bed, gesturing magnanimously. “Ask away.”

“Or, you know, you could volunteer something.” Sam threw him a smirk and Bucky snorted. “Fine. So tell me about this place. It’s just awful Communist architecture that looks like Dr. Evil’s lair or a flying saucer or something. What is the actual facility we’re going to?”

Bucky scratched the back of his head; he seemed so boyish and weary at the same time and Sam wondered if this wasn’t really what they looked like back in the war, him and Steve: kids, basically, that the serum had kept artificially young through all these years. “Remember I was telling you how the Soviet army was gathering up all the shit they could toward the end of the war? Bulgaria was one of the—I don’t know, staging grounds, I suppose you could call it, for their push through to Austria and Germany. They built into the mountain so they’d have a place to put some of the Hydra stuff they captured.” Barnes didn’t say “including me,” but he might as well have. “It was an easier location to hide Zola and his equipment in; things were...chaotic after victory in Europe, before he went back to the States. Soviets were rounding up a lot of their own, sending them to gulags in Siberia, executing them. Satellite countries were safer.”

It was a little creepy how detached he was. “So they transferred you there and...”

There was a bottle of water on the nightstand between them; Bucky stared at it for a long time before cracking it open—so, not so detached after all. “Next few years they worked on me, developed all the processes they used.” Sam twitched; he was using that word, “processes,” again and it made him queasy. “There were always a lot of people coming and going in those days, the monument was a way to cover that up. I was...asleep for a lot of it, or I wasn’t physically there. But a Party facility takes the attention off: all of a sudden a road into the mountain makes sense, room for lots of people makes sense, visitors in the dead of winter makes sense.”

“Then the Soviet Union falls apart.”

“Yeah. Sort of. I guess. They didn’t share that with me, I was a gun, a knife. Plus they lost me for a while.”

His jaw stiffened, he worked it back and forth. “What, like, escaped? That wasn’t in your file.”

“No,” Bucky gave a short sharp laugh. “It wouldn’t be. When everything was collapsing, I was in cryo, and I was sort of forgotten till someone in Moscow wanted me for a job, I guess everyone who’d been involved in the Winter Soldier project was dying off. I saw the monument for the last time a while after it’d been finished—they were probably getting ready to mothball the site inside the mountain. No one needed it. I’ve read up about events, trying to make sense of what I did recall: after the monument was done politics were changing—the Right was coming up in the States, I do remember that because of an op I had. Perfect ground for Hydra to really flourish. Hydra could see the end of the Soviets; that was around the time I got auctioned off to Pierce.”

It was cold, clinical, like Bucky was teaching a history lesson. And Sam supposed in a way he was: he’d have seen a completely different history from anything they’d learned on the other side, and he was wallpaper to them, background noise. He was property.

“You know I believed them, right?” Bucky asked. “Everyone wants to shove it under the rug, excuse it because I was forced, but I believed them: that I was Russian, that I was fighting for the good of Hydra and the USSR and world order. The last thing Pierce said to me was that Hydra needed me to help them give the world the freedom it deserved. Most other times, I’d have accepted it because it was my job and I wanted to do my job.”

What could Sam possibly say to that except, “I’m sorry,” then—“What happened?”

Bucky’s face was wistful, faraway. “Steve told me my name.” Then he grinned. “They did their best, man, they did their level best, but they couldn’t overcome Steve goddamn Rogers.”

“Hey,” Sam said, sitting up on the bed and turning up the iPod. “Teach me some moves.”

Bucky was incredulous, laughing awkwardly. “What?”

“Teach me some of your old-time dance moves—” offering a hand, and Bucky didn’t seem to know how to react so he kept staring at Sam as if he’d been whacked on the head.

“There’s no room.”

“C’mon, we’ll throw it all on the bed for now. Just—c’mon, man, show me what you got.”

Sam could see that small shift in the curve of Bucky’s shoulders, the muscle in his jaw, the usual sign he was tapped out; this was what a friend could offer: a way to end the night on a good note. There were a thousand things to talk about—what happened in Austria, his conversation with Steve, all of it—but maybe they could do that tomorrow on their freaking three-hour hike up to the monument.

Shaking his head, Bucky stood and held out a hand. “Okay. I’m out of your league, but okay.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“So they just cut a road into the mountain?”

“More or less,” Bucky said and shrugged. “You veer off in those trees and it’s like, you know, Cheyenne Mountain.”

It was fucking freezing up here and they weren’t even at the monument yet; an icy mist still hung over the top of the mountain, little whipped cream clouds behind that, and Sam could only just see the indistinct outline of the enormous tower and the flying saucer. “You said it’s just a couple of rooms and a toilet.”

“Well, I was exaggerating, but yeah. You had to get equipment in somehow. There’s an access stair inside the monument, though, and it’s more direct to the upper level.”

Damn, but he was hungry—they’d taken the Land Rover as far as they could and then had to break out the snowshoes _of course_ , because god forbid they didn’t get to use the snowshoes, what a waste of money.

And then there it was, looming above them on the mountaintop in all its Brutalist Communist architectural glory. Sam turned to Bucky and studied his face but it was inscrutable, his eyes still and taking the landscape in. He motioned—two fingers, a couple of quick jerks—to keep walking.

A clear path, flatter than the rest of the grounds, led up what must have been stairs under the snow and then to the gated main entrance. Graffiti marred almost every available surface, but the thing that made Sam’s skin break out into goosebumps and the hair on the back of his neck stand up were the words “FORGET YOUR PAST” painted in huge red letters above the doors. Bucky stared at it, arms hanging down by his sides, mouth open just a little, and oh crap, he was going to hyperventilate.

There was garbage under the snow, plenty of debris from the crumbling structure. The brochure he’d read claimed no one wanted the responsibility of maintaining the place—its neglect was sad, certainly, but Bucky’s response was way, way more intense than a crumbling example of Communist ideology and Hydra cover-up would seem to warrant. He was almost vibrating now, his chest rising and falling in an attempt to control his breathing.

“Hey,” Sam said, just as a huge, racking howl tore out of Bucky’s lungs and he dropped to his knees, fists clenched against his thighs. Sam snatched his right hand up, yanking the glove off for a pulse. “Breathe, Barnes, come on, just breathe with me. In one-two-three-four, out one-two-three,” repeating it over and over till Bucky followed along. “Talk to me,” Sam pleaded.

With his left hand covering his eyes, Bucky said, raw, “This is worse than I ever expected.” Of course it was: he’d expected maybe barbed wire, a military-type perimeter or something, anything that gave evidence of its purpose, but all that was left was a decaying monument to politics and a tourist destination for lovers of cool-looking abandoned buildings.

Sam sat, pulled Bucky down on his butt. “Yeah, you gotta love what they’ve done with the place” —and Bucky stared at him, wide-eyed and maybe a little hysterical and with that hiccupy breathing, before he squeezed out a weak laugh. “It’s the graffiti that really ties everything together.”

Bucky’s gaze was locked on “Forget Your Past” —strange that those words were written in English, even though most of the rest of the graffiti was in Cyrillic or Sam didn’t even know what languages: as if it had been written by Barnes himself, or maybe it had been written _for_ him.

“All this...everything was just...for nothing, wasn’t it. I killed so many people for _this_ , for people who believed in something...as rotten and ruined as this place. They destroyed me. For nothing.” Head in hands, he made what sounded like a laugh or a sob, Sam couldn’t tell.

“Well, hey, it’s hanging on in China,” Sam said tartly, “and I guess—Cuba?” Now Bucky really did laugh, a dry chuckle as he passed his hand over his eyes. “And may I take this opportunity, since Steve isn’t here to do it, to point out once again that you were forced to kill those people. Doesn’t matter whether you believed them or not, because even that belief wasn’t your choice. You were _made_ to believe in their agenda, you said it yourself: you were a gun, a knife, a fist. So cut yourself some goddamn slack.” He grabbed Bucky’s shoulder. “Also, my ass is really cold and wet now, and I'm hungry, so if we’re gonna sit here for a while and talk about this—which I am totally down for—then let’s put something underneath us and break out the food.”

So they took a break, and when he was ready Bucky gave one last despairing glance at the words, and they were heading around to the side where Bucky said there would be an indirect entry. The sky had cleared considerably while they’d been sitting—helpful, since it was so dark once you got inside—and they found themselves in the main auditorium of the saucer: _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ come to life, because the copper roof was falling to pieces and sunlight filtered through its snow-dusted holes like stars in a twilit sky. Sam half expected the music to kick in, that five-note sequence, but any dramatic music would do: this was eerie and beautiful and tragic and unlike anything he’d ever seen. The powder and slightly misty air inside made it so otherworldly despite the hammer and sickle in the center of the ceiling; perhaps it wasn’t so incredible when you could see all the graffiti and debris and garbage visitors had left behind. The mosaics on the walls had been left to fall apart or be stolen by souvenir hunters—Sam recognized Marx and Engels and Lenin, but not the other faces—though a surprising amount of the art remained somewhat intact, except one poor guy who’d clearly been removed by intent. “Why’d they remove that guy’s face? He stop toeing the party line?”

Bucky shrugged—right, he’d never really paid attention to the politics, he’d said, just “they told me who was a threat to the motherland, to Hydra, and pointed me in their direction”—and they tromped through the auditorium toward the outer ring of the gallery, where the mosaics were in even worse shape. The glass had long since disappeared from the Jetsons-style windows, but the view of the Balkans spread out before them was no less spectacular for the damage and wear.

“There’s an access tunnel out back that leads down.” Sam could see the shift in Bucky’s body language, he was narrowing his focus, walking with that stalking strut that Sam remembered all too well from when they were under assault on the freeway. And he was doing the thing with his hand: tapping thumb to fingers, over and over again.

“Okay, let’s stop for a minute and think this through. You weren’t planning on getting so shaken up, so maybe it’s not a good idea to go in.” As if it had ever been. Bucky turned to him, making a little noise of frustration in the back of his throat. Sam pointed at his hand. “I wasn’t going to ask you this, but you’re starting to get a little scary, so—what is it you’re doing with your fingers, is that a self-care thing, you’re calming yourself with something?”

“I’m not scary. Why am I scary?”

“Maybe you’re not dressed head to toe in leather bondage gear, but you’re acting a lot like that guy the first time I saw him.”

That seemed to bring Bucky up short. “No, I—no. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to.” He made a fist and stared at it. “When I—get tense, I try to count. Remind myself of what I’ve done. All the—the lives. So I won’t be him anymore.”

What could Sam say to that? Having some way to calm himself was healthy, but what he was using to do it wasn’t. He rubbed his forehead and asked instead, “What are you hoping to find down there? I thought this was strictly recon.”

“Yes, that’s what we’re doing. We’re reconnoitering. That’s what that means—an exploratory survey of enemy territory.” Fucking wiseass nonagenarians.

“You’re not just looking around. If that’s all you wanted, we could leave. But you want to go inside and probably get yourself killed or captured. Steve told me that was your idea of a plan: run straight into the enemy and get yourself captured.” Had he really forgotten what happened forty-eight hours ago?

With a narrow look, Bucky said, “Oh, he better not have said that. Talk about the fuckin’ pot calling the kettle black.”

“Don’t try to change the subject with outrage. We know there are guys down there, but we got no idea how many. You’ve just had a huge psychological shock. You got, what, one, maybe two guns? I got my wings, which won’t exactly be much use in a place like that.”

“I know the lay of the land—I go down there, check it out, and meanwhile you’re on your way down the mountain.”

As if. Sam shook his head. “No can do, buddy.” His shoulders slumped. “If you get me killed I will freaking haunt you for the rest of your unnaturally long genetically enhanced life.” Prudence was not exactly a concept that either Bucky or Steve had any passing familiarity with and somebody had to show some sense around here.

With a head-shake, Bucky worked his jaw and led him through the building toward the imposing tower. “There used to be an elevator to the top of the tower, so you could look out the star. It was made of red-colored glass. I guess that’s all been looted, but the maintenance hatches will still be there, I think.”

“The brochure said people thought ‘ruby glass’ meant it was made of real rubies.”

“Well, people are dumb.” They went outside and Barnes began digging snow away from the tower’s base. When it was clear, he stood back. “Huh.” The hatch was sealed up tight, looked like it hadn’t been used in decades, carefully hidden from the eyes of visitors and looters, but there was a tiny housing for possibly a lock or cabling. With a cheeky grin, Bucky smashed it with his metal fist. “Oops.”

“What did you do that for? Are you trying to get us noticed?”

“Perimeter camera cabling. The asshole watching the security feeds will think an animal or a tourist has accidentally cut something and they’ll send Jim-Bob out to fix it. We grab his entrance key, bing bang boom.”

Sam groaned. This was such a terrible, terrible idea.

 

* * *

 

“Down those—no, those stairs,” Bucky said and pointed to Sam’s left. The underground facility was...much bigger than he’d remembered it; either his memories were faulty or they’d returned here some time ago and built it out, either as a contingency or just—shit, maybe they were ramping up some kind of new program in the wake of the Insight disaster.

They’d already checked out the top floor, nothing there except a guard watching the security cameras, so cutting all the feeds had been easy enough; Sam had glared at him when they looked at the monitors and saw both more floors and more personnel lurking in the mountainside entrance tunnel than Bucky’d expected, as if to say “you are a lying liar who lies” before arming himself with the guard’s gun and muttering under his breath. As long as Hydra stayed way down there, they would be fine on the upper levels; they could see what they needed to see and be gone before anyone missed the guard.

The second level, where he’d been...operated on and stored and tested had been blown out, with new corridors linking multiple smaller rooms locked by biometric devices. This was far more advanced than Bucky’d anticipated; it should have been where the access to the entrance tunnel began and then the road out, but they’d moved the long, dark, sloping concrete corridor somewhere else—there were now actual corners and walls and multiple ingress/egress points. “Coupla grey rooms and a toilet,” Sam said again, as Bucky shrugged. On the new third level was where everything unraveled: the stairs led almost directly into what was basically one giant computer room, the kind they used back in his day—enormous amber screens on top of punch-card terminals or reel-to-reels, and something about them chilled him, his skin was clammy with dread.

In the corner sat much newer equipment, a lot of it yet unused: state of the art servers and flatscreens and cameras; still, it was the older camera at the edge of the main console that caught Bucky’s eye as it turned slowly toward them.

A console screen flickered to life, amber ones and zeroes cascading down the front of it until it coalesced into an image that at first he couldn’t quite identify—like having a word on the tip of your tongue, except a visual. The image formed, reformed, until recognition hit Bucky like a freight train: Zola. Zola was in the computers. Rushing, fractured images shattered Bucky’s mind: he was back in the cryo chamber, ice crystals in his veins and in his eyes, vision blurred, lips frozen together before he could scream; his new arm was being attached; he was under the halo. Thunder crashed through his head, his heart stuttered in his chest and his legs gave out on him, he sank slowly to the floor, but Sam caught him just as Zola’s voice came from somewhere, he didn’t know where, it was all around them, and it said, “My dear Sergeant Barnes.”

 _They already cost me Zola_ , Pierce had said, the night he gave the Soldier the assignment to kill Captain America and Black Widow. It hadn’t meant much to him then, anything not relevant to the mission was meaningless chatter by that point in his existence—he’d been vaguely aware then that some part of Zola’s mind was still intact and being accessed by his controllers, partially concerned that a fragment of his mind went still at the mention of that name. But he’d never expected to see it.

“What the hell is that thing?” Sam said, pulling Bucky up straight.

“Your Captain may have destroyed my primary databanks-banks, but one must always keep a backup, don’t you agree-ee-ee?” The machine stuttered, the screen froze and went black, before cycling on again. Bucky tried to say something, but all he mustered was a dry wheeze in this throat. “Though I fear I am somewhat diminished in my current state. Still, I think you would agree this is a good place to retreat and rebuild?” It stalled on the last syllable for a while, as Bucky opened and closed his mouth a few times, choking on the name until he whispered “Zola” and drew in a deep, shaky breath. He had no idea why the voice had such power over him now; he hadn’t heard it in decades, but Sam was staring at him with that pararescue concern face and Bucky knew he must look as petrified as he felt.

“Yes! The one who perfected you, who made you what you were meant to be: the perfect soldier. So many of my attempts to create another super being failed, but you—you were my true success. My greatest creation.”

Bucky clenched his fist and said, “You didn’t make me. I’m a human being.”

It made a tsking noise. “What other reason could you have to return to the place you were made?” Bucky would swear it was smirking. “You were destined to be the Soldier. We were destined to find one another. We belong here together, you and I.”

Sam’s face was thunderous as he stalked toward the screen, his fist bunching. “Shut the hell up.” He turned to Bucky, incredulous. “Do these assholes _ever_ stop _talking_?”

The quiet was shattered as an alarm blared. Of course. The Zola program wouldn’t want him leaving here under his own power. “Fuck this,” Bucky said, and began smashing everything he could reach with his weapon arm: hoist it on its own petard.

“So much for the stealth approach,” Sam yelled over the noise and made a beeline for the back exit behind the new equipment. “We gotta get out of here, come on!” Bucky pulled out one of his pistols and shot at anything that wasn’t already sparking and smoking, but suddenly Sam grabbed him by the hood of his parka and started hauling. Bucky threw Sam’s arm off and went back to emptying the magazine into the databanks, but Sam wasn’t letting him have this, he bellowed in his face, “Barnes! We are _leaving_!”

Yes, yes, they had to go. The secondary exit led to a dark hallway lit only by emergency lights, and Bucky smashed open one of the biometric locks to the first room he saw. It was filled with large tanks full of yellow-green fluid, empty now, but he imagined they wouldn’t be for long. “What is—what are they doing here?” Sam said.

“Building an army, most likely.”

“Is this.” He swallowed. “Is this what they put you in?”

“A lot less high tech, but basically this design, yeah. Weapons check.” Bucky should not have given in to the rage and used up so much ammo on the computer; he knew better than that. Sam had only the loaded nine millimeter they’d taken from the guard.

Sam gave him a look of pure disdain. “ _Now_ can we call in the cavalry?”

“What good’s that gonna do? It’ll be hours before they get here. Just—stick close to me and I’ll get us out of here, okay? This is what I’m good at.” Bucky tried very hard not to think about the fact that he’d nearly killed Sam on the helicarrier that day.

They slipped out into the corridor that led around the computer room, back to back, heading for the—southeast stairs, he hoped. Did they know what kind of intruder they had when Zola had tripped the alarm? Were they prepared to deal with the Winter Soldier?

When they hit the stairwell Sam asked, “Which way is out?” and Bucky hesitated, because he didn’t know how far deep into the mountain it went now. But the old tunnel entrance _should_ be on the second level somewhere, so he waved his gun: up.

Three agents swept through the doors to the fifth level: there was a split second where they hesitated, unsure—amateurs, these guys had no real training, he could tell in an instant—giving Bucky just enough time to throw Sam behind him and block their bullets. He fired down at them, hitting one in what looked like the throat, but he was badly angled trying to protect Sam and a bullet hit Sam in the top of the thigh.

Bucky drew a deep breath as Sam howled in pain and anger, focused his mind, fired down—one, two, three gone. “How bad is it?” Bucky asked, adding, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. God, Sam, I’m sorry.”

Sam hollered, “Stop apologizing and get us the hell out of here!” He half lifted Sam to inch their way into the corridor—yes, good, Bucky saw the accessway to the tunnel entrance, just as three more Hydra goons came pelting around the corner. “Lookee, more guns for us,” Bucky said and he pushed Sam against the wall, charging straight for them, head down. They shot wildly in their panic—who was training these assholes?—and were clearly not expecting him to deflect bullets with his arm.

Bucky made quick work of taking them out and stuffed their handguns into the pockets of his jacket. When he turned, Sam he was limping toward Bucky, holding his hand out for a rifle, but his skin was turning a very worrying ashy color. “Can you make it into the tunnel?” Bucky asked as Sam gritted out, “Don’t add insult to injury. Just help me and shut up.”

Bucky chewed the inside of his cheek. “I think they must have put most of their boots on the ground in Austria, they’re probably looking for us still. These guys are not—prepared.”

“That’s...not a comfort. How many unprepared Hydra goons you think we’re lookin’ at?” Sam’s voice was tense with pain.

“No idea. But I imagine we’ll find out if we dawdle any longer.” Bucky glanced at Sam’s leg.

“Go to hell,” Sam growled, and Bucky barked out a little laugh and said, “Yeah, you know, already been.”

They made it to the main door that should—maybe—open up to the entrance. “Stay here.” He set Sam down slowly.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“We might have to blow that door.”

“Gee, sure wish we had some grenades. I wonder what happened to them? Oh right, we left them on the plane because this was just recon.” Christ, it was like being stuck with Steve. Bucky really had to get Sam out of here; they’d want to take Bucky back, poke at him for information and use his genetic material for whatever program they were building here, but Sam—Sam would be collateral. That was not happening on his watch.

Bucky found an override panel buried at the bottom corner of the door. Hallefuckinglujah, at least one thing was going right. He pulled the door up to shoulder height, hauled Sam to his feet, and then brought the door down, smashing the controls from the other side so they couldn’t raise it.

“Oh, yay, snowmobiles,” Sam said. “Praise the lord.” Bucky half-carried him to the nearest one; he hated to drive it over the bare ground, but needs must. Before he could get Sam parked on it, there was the distinct whine of an RPG and he threw Sam off to the side, the grenade hit the snowmobile and it exploded in his face. His arm couldn’t block all the shrapnel so he caught a giant chunk of the engine housing, staggering backwards, almost falling on top of Sam.

That was—Christ, it really rang his bell, he was dizzy and had trouble getting to his feet. Someone was coming for them through the entrance, maybe two, and he made to grab for the rifle that had been knocked from his hand, but Sam had already picked it up and was shooting crazily from the ground. Blood stung Bucky’s eyes, he blinked and tried to shake it off but he only swayed precariously, dimly aware of Sam calling his name over and over.

“Come on, we’re clear,” Sam was saying, right in his face, and he blinked rapidly as the two of them stumbled forward to the light.

“Are you—”

“I’m all right. I’m all right,” Sam insisted. “Just get us out of here.”

A four-wheel-drive was heading straight up the plowed part of the access road toward them. “Stay here.”

“Bucky, no.”

Bucky gave him his best cheerful smile, but fuck, his head hurt; the light was agonizing. “Bucky, yes.” He planted his feet and leaned forward.

It was kind of sadly anticlimactic—only one guy inside, so as soon as he flipped onto the roof all it took was one quick punch through the window and he had the guy out of the seat. They wouldn’t get far in the vehicle—the snow was far too deep and wet as soon as they got down near tree cover—but at least he could get Sam to the trees and then...who knew. Sam didn’t look capable of flying them out of here, not until they stanched some of that blood flow; maybe Bucky’d get a crash course in operating the wings. He was driving as fast as he could with his head pounding and blood running into his eyes, pushed forward in the seat because of the pack, when they hit a drift too high for the carriage and plowed to a stop. He pulled Sam out of the vehicle and they limped for cover.

“Stop,” Sam said. “Just stop, let me look at that head wound.”

“It’s all right. I’m all right,” Bucky said, trying to inspect Sam’s wound instead. “Where did it hit you? Bone?” and he saw it—a through and through, just under the hip bone on the outside of Sam’s thigh, so probably bone.

“No, I don’t think so. Just a lot of blood. Please tell me you still have the first aid kit in your pack.” He pushed Bucky’s hair back with trembling hands. “You might have a concussion.” Sam was probably right, because his vision was still blurry and he felt nauseated now that the adrenaline was wearing off. But there wasn’t anything they could really do about it. Taking the pack off, Bucky dug around and found the tiny first aid kit in the bottom compartment.

“I’m sorry, Sam, I’m really sorry.” As he handed it over, Sam pulled the satphone out of his cargo pocket. “Can you fly? We gotta get off this mountain.”

“I don’t know.” His hands and arms were shaking, his face was—mournful, maybe, and he was getting shocky. “Now can we call in the cavalry?”

“Yes. Yes, we can absolutely call in the cavalry.” He would never hear the end of it when Steve got here—he’d probably put Bucky in a cage himself. But even Bucky knew it was time to get the hell out of Dodge, as Sam had put it.

With one hand Sam put pressure on Bucky’s head wound, with the other hand he dialed the phone; Bucky wiped the blood from his eyes. After a couple minutes Sam put Bucky’s hand on the gauze and staggered to his feet, holding the phone aloft, a choking noise coming from his throat. “Aw, hell no.”

“What?”

Sam looked as if he was going to cry. “They’re jamming the satellite.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: no plan survives initial contact with the enemy, not even Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes's. I think it should be the final chapter, or at least last chapter and an epilogue, we'll see; kinda discouraged right now.


	4. Blind Alley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It feels like a dream,” Bucky said idly, and he recalled it: that liminal moment when the ice came down and he wasn’t blank and black inside just yet, and flashes of a life he knew couldn’t have been his shone in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some torture in this chapter. It's not excessive, or at least, it didn't seem like it was intense enough to put a graphic violence warning on, but in case that's an issue here's your alert.

It was hard to tell whether Bucky was puking over behind a downed tree because of the concussion or because of the bad news that they were gonna die here in the godforsaken Balkans. Barnes didn’t seem the type of guy prone to panic-puking, but Sam had really only just begun to dig down into the meat of who Bucky really was, so he supposed that wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Dancing together, traveling and climbing, and laughing in the face of death had given him a few more clues about what Bucky was really like, but...

Sam dragged himself over closer to Bucky’s heaving back, digging around in the kit to see if there was any anti-nausea medication. “Okay, you have to let me look at your eyes now. This is serious shit.”

With one last retch for emphasis, Bucky muttered, “I’ll heal,” and raised his head, wiping spittle from his mouth. One entire side of his forehead was mottled purple and black, and the gash that trailed up through his hairline still oozed blood under the gauze bandage. Bucky cupped a handful of snow to his mouth and shivered as he sucked it down.

“Shut up and let me see.” Bucky grumbled but staggered up next to him. “How many fingers?” and Bucky stared at his hand for way too long, appearing for all the world as if he might fall asleep and that struck another chord of worry in Sam, before he held up his middle finger. Sam popped his lips and exhaled loudly. “Aaookay, I’m just gonna fly on out of here and leave you to die. ‘Sorry, Steve, nothin’ I could do. It was just his time to go. It was such a dangerous plan to begin with.’”

“Right, you’re in _excellent shape_ to fly. You should see you. You look like you’ve been bleached. You’re _grey_.” The sign of a truly better man was that he knew when to let it go, so Sam waved a hand and levered himself down to the ground.

They both rested back against the tree trunk and sighed at the same time. Honestly, Barnes was right, it was a toss-up which one of them was in the least worst shape to use the wings. But they weren’t getting out of here anytime soon using the four-wheel-drive, although maybe Bucky could think of way to send some kind of signal using the radio—that is, if there was even a way without playing right into Hydra’s hands. “How’d it look back there when we were getting out?” Sam asked. If it was true what Bucky had said, that most of the personnel would be in Austria still looking for them, then maybe they were regrouping, waiting for reinforcements for a tactical assault.

“Cakewalk.”

“That bad, huh?” Aw, geez, there was clear fluid draining from Bucky’s left ear. They were so very fucked.

“War is hell.” His face showed that thousand-yard stare Sam remembered from when Bucky’d first come home with Steve; the head injury, sure, but he was also probably running scenarios in his head—capture or kill, quick death versus slow torture, Sam as leverage or collateral. They’d probably set everything in motion the minute they started up that mountain road.

“Wait. Do you have the space blanket?” Sam was freaking _freezing_ now, and Bucky was right, he was far too shocky to reliably fly them back to the Land Rover and they’d be perfect targets for missiles, but on the other hand Bucky looked like he’d have to die to get better.

He dug into his pack with a stricken face. “Shit, did we leave it at the—”

Okay, so Sam wasn’t the better man: “Gee, wish we hadn’t left the emergency GPS beacon back on the plane as well.” Not that it would do them much good at this point.

All he got in response was a weak “Me too.”

“Be honest with me, Buck.” At hearing the name only Steve used for him, Bucky’s eyebrow crept up his forehead. It seemed to take everything he had to focus and answer the question.

“I can’t see well out of my left eye, it doesn’t want to focus. I’m struggling not to puke again. It’s hard to focus even on this conversation, too sleepy.” He shrugged, an eloquent statement of futility. “I don’t know how to use those wings and I could get us killed learning, but I don’t know that you’re in much better shape and I _know_ you don’t have the strength to lift me.”

“Bleeding’s stopped. Pain’s down. But yeah. If my blood pressure drops any more and we’re up there, or they start shooting at us...”

“Rock paper scissors?”

“Nah. Just let me do it. Let me drink some more water and then we’ll go.” They would be like a fat bumblebee overladen with pollen.

The distress and doubt on Bucky’s face would have been funny if it wasn’t so goddamn tragic. “Tick tock, Wilson.”

“Didn’t you say most of them were probably in Austria looking for us?” Sam knew how stupidly wishful he sounded.

Met with a grunt, Sam finished off the water in his canteen and struggled to his feet. “Unlock me.” He pointed to the top of the wing pack, since he didn’t trust himself to reach back the way he’d usually do and not topple over like a Jenga tower, then popped his elbows back to open the wings and hit the repulsors; both wings flared, but only one of the jets fired. Sam closed his eyes in despair. Why the hell had he expected anything to go their way? A couple more frantic tries produced the same results.

“Uh...that’s not supposed to happen, right?” Bucky eyed the wings skeptically. “The other two’re supposed to light up when you do that with your arms?”

Sam began, “Can you—” but Bucky was already kneeling behind him to inspect it, whacking it like a computer or an old TV or something, jiggling anything he could find to jiggle. Stark would have lost his nut over this.

“Shit,” —and Bucky’s raised eyebrows pretty much told Sam all he needed to know; his heart divebombed straight down to his boots. “I can’t tell what happened, but the thing’s fucking cracked.” So was Bucky’s voice; there was something monumentally demoralizing about that sound coming from a supersoldier. Maybe the housing had been damaged in the snowmobile explosion, or when Bucky landed on him. Stark was gonna get a memo about quality control. From heaven, apparently.

“There’s no way I can carry both of us on one engine.”

“I figured.” They were silent for a time, and Bucky said, kneeling in the snow, head down, “You lost someone too, right? In Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“Yeah. My wingman, Riley. There were four of us in the program. We were close,” Sam said, before Bucky could ask.

“You never really stop feeling that, do you—the guilt? And responsibility.” Bucky turned his eyes up to Sam. “Steve thinks he’s the only one with guilt, but I guess...this past year, when I started getting some memories back...I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I left him, when I reassured him all the time I was with him to the end of the line.” A shiver wracked him and he tucked his hands under his armpits. “Feels like I’m letting him down again, leaving him alone one more time. I shoulda let him come with.”

The exhaustion made him punchy, wobbly, but he couldn’t let Bucky go to that place just yet. Sam said, “I’ve made a million different choices, saved Riley’s life hundreds of times in my head. You can’t really survive that way, you know?” It might have been a weird thing to do, but he smoothed his hand over Bucky’s wrecked head. “Anyway—I think in a contest for who has more guilt in that story, Steve’s gonna win every time. Guy is fueled on guilt, I swear.” Sam flashed him a smile and Bucky shook his head.

With a raggedy inhale, Bucky stumbled to his feet. “All right, listen, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna tuck you up all nice and cozy under these boughs, and then I’ll hump it down to the Land Rover and call in some help. The farther away I get from the site, the better the likelihood of me getting a signal out. By the time I get down there I should be in better shape.”

“Or you could collapse in the snow and die all lonesome.”

Instead of the laugh Sam had hoped for, Bucky had a weird, faraway look on his face, hope falling to the ground like hailstones. “They did worse to me in the tests. I’ll survive.” In most people’s mouths that word would be almost meaningless; in Bucky’s it was chilling.

“Tests.” Maybe it was Sam’s turn to start barfing now. “You mean torture.”

“The...yeah, you know.”

“What the fuck did they do.”

Barnes was always puzzled when people offered him sympathy, as if he was still unable to believe he deserved to be treated like a human being. “There was basically two kinds of...torture” —he waved a hand around, acknowledging Sam’s word but not necessarily accepting the truth of it— “one to tear my body down, see what would happen in different scenarios, how successful their work was.”

“Okay. And two?”

Bucky’s head twitched, he rolled his shoulders. “Break the rest of me, I suppose. The soul—break down whatever made me human, made me Bucky Barnes once.”

Sam pressed his lips in a tight line and swallowed, breathing out his nose. Fuck, he so did not have the strength for this. “So you’ve had concussions before at that level. They... _tested_ how far you could survive with extreme blood loss, severe head injuries.”

“Among other things. The point I was trying to make is that I’ve been pushed to limits you would think I shouldn’t survive, and I know what those limits are. I don’t heal as quickly as Steve, but I heal fast, and I can usually recognize when things are getting dangerous. Where I’m going to lose consciousness and might go past the point of no return.”

“You guys are just sad and creepy and you give me nightmares, you know?” Bucky huffed out a little laugh. “So that was the guy back there, ASCII-Face. The guy who broke you down and did those tests.”

“Yeah, at first. He gave me the arm. Mostly it was—he was the one who did the experiments that helped me survive the fall.”

“Wait, yeah, Zola. He was a computer program before, right? Steve and Natasha were talking about it when they got to my place, they’d almost been blown up at some old location—where Steve went to basic.”

Something about that made it difficult for Bucky to find words; he nodded instead, face a grim map of lost memory. He pulled Sam over to help him deeper into the trees, ripped a few limbs off with his metal hand, and built Sam a pleasantly aromatic bough-fort.

“Gimme that—that—gizmo thing.”

“You mean the satphone?” Sam said archly, and Bucky scowled at him. Sam handed him the phone, looking into his eyes. Cognitive trouble was another really bad sign and Sam didn’t want to say it but Bucky taking off alone at this point was another terrible idea.

“If it looks like they’ll get here before I do, use the—the wings. Better you get out of here on your own than let them take you. But I’ll be back,” Bucky said, hesitating, and then he threw his right arm around Sam’s shoulders and hugged him; Sam was so stunned that he almost missed the chance to pat his back in response. Sam was a real hugger, not a bro-hugger. Bucky gave him one last glance, shrugged his pack on, and then headed off through the trees.

It was in Sam’s nature to be positive and hopeful. But it was pretty tough to find the kernel of hope in this situation; he was in shock and Barnes wasn’t much better off, supersoldier serum or not. It had been a couple hours hike up here and that was with snowshoes on—Bucky’d be sinking into knee-deep snow in spots, his body temperature taxed to extremes. And they both knew the wings wouldn’t get him very far, and if Hydra got that close they’d just shoot him down anyhow.

Still, he kept checking his pulse in between periods of leaning back and resting, not entirely willing to give in to the panic that slithered through his guts, until he heard the distant sounds of aircraft and knew he was screwed. Didn’t sound like choppers, but just because they hadn’t seen large aircraft up here didn’t mean some fancy Hydra plane hadn’t been scrambled from a nearby town. Sam leaned back and closed his eyes: this was the way the world ended, not with a bang but a goddamn gunshot wound in Bulgaria.

The sound of the aircraft got louder, and Sam wasn’t sure but he thought he caught a strange high-pitched hum underneath it: after a few seconds he realized it sounded a lot like the whine of the wing pack’s repulsor engines. He pushed the boughs off and dragged himself to a slight clearing where he could get a look toward the northwest direction; after scanning the horizon a few minutes he saw it—the red and gold of Iron Man, about thirty seconds out.

They didn’t need to call in the cavalry: the cavalry was already here.

 

* * *

 

“For the last friggin’ time, you are not jumping out of the plane until we land. I’m gonna have Nat tranq you if you don’t shut up.” Clint pointed to the back of the plane with a clear message: Sit. Stay.

Steve knew what it was like to battle with his body: the fight for air scraping through unwilling lungs, the too-rapid heartbeat that left him dizzy and swaying, the frigid tremble of a fever shaking him from head to toe. All things he thought he’d left behind long ago but here he was doing battle again, and all the more humiliated for his lack of control.

Tony’s voice came over comms, halfway between soothing and riled. “I got this, for the love of god, Cap, just chill.”

“As soon as I find a safe place to land” —and Clint muttered something unintelligible Steve couldn’t hear but that sounded like rocks and snow— “I will open the damn doors.”

“Study the schematic of the facility that JARVIS just put up. Do your breathing,” Tony said. “Say your words.”

They all saw this with much greater clarity, Steve knew that. But Bucky was—Sam was—who knew, at this point? They were over eastern Austria at the time JARVIS had discovered the fighting inside the facility, so it might as well have been New York for the good it would do them to ride to the rescue. Hydra must have thought it was early Christmas, having the Asset walk right into their lair—and Sam would be worthless, something to be swept aside.

At least—at least Steve could be grateful that Natasha had suggested they get over to Europe on the double; at least they were that much closer to Bucky and Sam. Once Steve had told her about Bulgaria she’d summoned meetings with her contacts; something hadn’t sat right about that for her. They’d discovered that most of the U.S. intelligence agencies had known something was up in Buzludzha back in the Cold War—a lot more concrete had gone up there than was necessary to build the monument, but after Socialism died its quiet death in Bulgaria, nobody looked at it twice again. Some digging produced files showing that a few years before the Insight project had even been greenlit, new activity was spotted at the facility: maybe they were rebuilding the monument, the analysts thought, or maybe they were filling it in, but nobody cared all that much—the Cold War was over, Buzludzha was an artifact, a tourist attraction, and whatever else had happened there, it wasn’t of concern, not after 9/11.

After Bucky and Sam had been attacked in Austria Steve was no longer as sanguine about their chances of wandering around Hydra’s territory and coming out of it in one piece. This ridiculous plan of Bucky’s seemed to Steve like so much more than simply getting closure for his past—as if he was trying to make up for leaving Steve at home, for pushing him away, by bringing Steve a special present or something: here’s where Hydra took the party, now go blow them up some more. He’d promised to stay with Steve, but he hadn’t, and now Bucky believed he had to make up for breaking that promise.

_Steve had asked everyone to give them breathing space when he’d brought Bucky home to his apartment in Stark Tower, and they had, though someone—Pepper, he was certain—had brought in fresh flowers and stocked the refrigerator and ensured everything was tidied, even set up the second bedroom for Bucky with everything he might possibly need._

_They’d stepped out of the elevator doors into the foyer and Steve had shut it off, while Bucky scanned the room, taking in the view from the large bank of windows. “That’s something,” Bucky said and smiled self-consciously; Steve had tried to prepare him for what he’d see on the plane trip home, but it was hard to explain this place to himself, sometimes, let alone someone who had lived the life Bucky had all those years, who’d lived on the run in the months since._

_“It really is,” Steve said, and tucked a lock of his hair behind his ear. Bucky was _here_ , he was with him in his home—he hoped it would eventually feel like it was Bucky’s home, too, prayed Bucky would continue to stay—and every heavy beat of Steve’s heart physically _hurt_. Steve cupped the back of Bucky’s head and drew him forward, and Bucky favored him with a true smile that invited a kiss. He nipped at Bucky’s perfect lips, slid his hand around his waist. Bucky pulled his jacket off as they kissed, draping it over the nearby table with a light toss: a familiar gesture from long ago, a comfortable one that said, “I’m home.” _

_“Are you tired? Hungry?” Steve asked, slipping his hands up under Bucky’s shirt, shivering as Bucky slid his real hand into his jeans, over his ass._

_“You gotta stop asking me that,” Bucky said, pressing his forehead to Steve’s. “We flew in a fucking fully stocked private jet, what else could I want for?”_

_“Anything. Anything you can think of to want, it’s yours.”_

_“More of this. All I need. This is all.” He kissed Steve again and tugged his hand so they could move into the living room. “Why don’t you show me around.” Everything seemed to catch Bucky’s interest: he ran his hands over the furniture, played with the flowers and the knickknacks, as if their textures were a revelation, as if he was new to the world, and Steve supposed in a way he was. While he might have had more experience with the modern world through the years Steve had been simply gone from it, that world had been filled with brutality and deprivation instead of homely things and Steve was overcome with a desire to make up for that._

_And Steve watched the way Bucky moved through it now, just as he had watched it back before the war, always seeing him, always noticing. There was a composed quality about Bucky now where before he’d been all passion and motion; Steve was discovering that he contained these icy pockets of stillness within, and that such stillness could be every bit as intimidating as a weapon._

_“There’s a bedroom for you,” Steve said and opened the door._

_Doubt clouded his face as he looked at the tastefully furnished room, his metal hand balled into a fist. “I’m not staying with you?” Bucky asked with the slightest catch to his voice._

_“I thought...maybe you’d want privacy.”_ Maybe you’d want to be away from me.

_“Well, I don’t,” and Bucky’s tone took on a wounded edge—he was playing it out in his mind, the damage he’d done and believed he couldn’t repair. “But if it’s—”_

_“Don’t say ‘safer’ because that is not what I meant. I just didn’t know how much of me you’d want to deal with. I do have a tendency to hover, or so I’ve heard.” Bucky scrutinized him, looking for some crack in the lie because Bucky knew just what a terrible liar he was, but when he was satisfied at the truth, he let Steve pull him to his room._

_Bucky made a murmur of approval when he saw the huge bed, and put his hands on Steve’s face. “I’m staying, then I’m staying here. We could pitch a half-squad tent on that thing.” And all Steve cared about in those words was that he was staying, wanted to stay in his bed, and Steve couldn’t risk jinxing it by saying “forever,” so he swallowed it back and kept that hope to himself._

Natasha had been watching his face as they got closer to Buzludzha, sometimes checking and rechecking her weapons, just for something to do, Steve thought. “Do you think—” he began but was cut off by Tony: “Got eyes on ’em.”

“Got eyes on a place I can land?” Clint asked, exasperated, when the display over the controls lit up with a topo image from Tony’s HUD. “Tight squeeze,” Clint commented.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Tony said and Steve could almost see his eyes rolling.

“Have a little faith,” Nat said to Steve, smiling at him with her crooked style, and he scoffed.

“It’s not that I don’t have faith in him. Them. But— In the time it took to get here they could have been overrun. They weren’t exactly prepared to wade into battle.”

“I think Barnes is always prepared to wade into battle.”

“I suppose that’s the thing. He wants to—to not be. I know he wants to somehow put that behind him and that’s a lot of what this is about.”

“What about you? I think you want to put this behind you, too.” Her transparency was laughable—keep him distracted again so he wouldn’t throw a tantrum.

He pushed a finger up under his helmet and scratched at his temple. “I do, sometimes. But then I also think that this was a gift, you know, to live past thirty, to see something wrong and be able to fix it. I know things aren’t the same, but I think that part of me has never changed. Bucky says I was always this guy, I just didn’t always have the means to do anything about it.”

“You’ve got some red in your ledger, too.” The corner of her mouth stretched up into a full, sweet smile, and he grinned back at her.

“We’re kind of a collective of idiots all trying to atone for things or fix the problems of the world.”

“Fasten your seatbelts, kids, because this could be a really bumpy landing,” Clint hollered over his shoulder, and Steve grabbed a bar before snaking an arm around Nat. Some rock gave way under the landing pads of the jet when they first touched down, but other than that little bobble everything went fine and as promised, Clint hit the switch for the doors.

“Go,” Natasha said and shooed him, even though he didn’t exactly need coaxing. In his earpiece Tony was talking to Sam—but Steve was brought up short by Tony flying straight toward him, carrying Sam in his arms. Only Sam.

_Only Sam._

“Cap, get back in the quinjet, now,” was all Tony would say. There was nothing like trying to run fast in snow when you had no idea what kind of terrain was underneath it, but he beat it back to the plane double time as Tony rushed Sam inside.

Sam was—shit, he was ashen and his pants leg was black with blood. Natasha took the wing pack off carefully so Tony could lay him down on the jumpseat. “Oh god, Sam,” Steve said. Where the fuck was Bucky? If Sam was alone...

At first Steve thought he was unconscious as he knelt down next to him, but Sam gave him a sleepy half smile and put his hand on Steve’s arm. “Hey, it’s the Seventh Cavalry. Just in the nick of time.” Next to him, Nat was setting a med kit up; Steve took his gloves off so he could hold on to Sam if necessary.

“Tell me what to do,” Steve said, but Clint pulled him aside, saying, “Let me. Wilson can talk me through this better’n you.” It was true, Clint was a good field medic, but Steve felt the weight of being helpless like he hadn’t since he was small.

“Go get Bucky,” Sam said with urgency. “He took off for the Land Rover when we found out the wings were broken. He’s got a head injury, I’m worried he might not have—seen you coming” —and Sam’s eyes were pleading with Steve not to lose his shit. _Head injury. God._ This was what he was reduced to: a haunted house, nothing but an accumulation of fears and regrets and mistakes.

Tony slapped Steve’s gloves in his hand and dragged him by the arm out of the plane; before he knew it they were airborne and talking to JARVIS, who claimed he was having trouble locating Bucky despite having found the vehicle and the satphone. There was no way for Steve to read Tony’s expression with the faceplate down, but it seemed as though Tony’s gauntleted fingers clutched him tighter, like he thought Steve would try to jump off. When they spotted the vehicle there was no sign of Bucky—but Steve told himself he’d know that Hydra would be on the move looking for him, maybe he’d hidden himself in tree cover...

“The footprints end about ten meters back that way,” Tony said as he dropped Steve to the ground and landed.

“And are his the only footprints?” He thought he might snap off the straps on the shield if he gripped them any tighter. Steve stalked over and picked up the phone. Everything was—too loud and too quiet, the teeming nothingness and too-muchness of it all left him teetering at the edge of something black, like a canyon as it recedes into the distance when a train carries you away.

Tony faced him as he tromped back, watching with that fucking expressionless mask and those goddamn glowing eye holes; somehow that made the whole thing feel about a hundred times worse than it already was. The facemask flipped up and Tony said gently, “No. I can’t tell how many guys there were, but it’s more than two. It looks like he must have run that way, before they...”

Taking a breath, Steve faced the direction Tony pointed and asked, “Where do they go after that?”

“Into the woods. Feels like I should break into the Sondheim.”

With a hot glare, Steve snapped, “Whatever the hell that means.” Jesus Christ, the last thing he needed was a bunch of smartass pop culture references right now. He touched his earpiece. “Clint, can you ask Sam if the facility entrance is accessible through the forest?” Maybe it was like that place, the old NORAD facility he’d read about when he first came out of the ice.

“I’ll try, but he’s kinda busy right now telling me how to fix his leg without killing him.” Steve’s stomach played hopscotch inside him for a while as Tony stared impassively, until Clint said, “Yeah, okay, Sam says it’s an access tunnel almost directly north of where Stark found him, but he says that if you enter through the access in between the monument’s tower and the flying saucer it’d probably be faster.”

Next thing he knew Tony’s arms lifted him up and they zoomed through the trees straight toward the flying saucer, like in that _Star Wars_ movie where they sped through the forest on those hovering motorcycle things.

“Oh look, the Welcome Wagon’s here,” Tony said, words punctuated with an RPG fired at them. He tucked Steve into his side and Steve brought the shield up as they veered left with practiced precision.

“Hey kids,” Tony said, “you got two choppers headed your way.” The reinforcements had arrived; obviously not in time to stop Bucky and Sam from leaving the facility but definitely here for the main act.

“We’re a bit busy right now.” Natasha was terse, they hadn’t finished working on Sam, so Tony barrel-rolled them back toward the quinjet. From the back of his suit the mini rockets lifted into formation.

“Are we playing historical preservation society here, or is the monument collateral?” Steve couldn’t tell if Tony was excited about the idea of blowing it up or sad that it might have to be destroyed.

“Let’s...try not to anger the Bulgarian government if we can avoid it.” The last thing he wanted was to provide another country with a good reason to come after the Winter Soldier. Or at least the second to last thing he wanted.

“I gotta admit, I’m almost tempted to see if I can buy it and renovate. What a fabulous mountain lair this would make.” Steve heard the familiar click of the rockets firing; two rockets went swooshing above Tony’s head before splitting in a Y. The helos were dangerously close to the monument when they blew.

“Honestly, that just showed no respect for us. I feel personally attacked.”

“Hang on, guys, we’re done,” Clint said, “I’ll be with you in a minute. Soon as we get Sam situated.” There would be more troops coming after the quinjet; Steve didn’t doubt that Natasha would probably enjoy turning Stark’s new repulsor cannons on them.

“Let me down,” Steve grumbled. “I gotta find that access route.”

“I’d say ‘your funeral’ but it’d be Barnes’s too if you go in half-cocked. Jeez, Rogers, let us _help_ you. Let us make you fully cocked.”

Of course Tony was right; Steve was operating on pure panic, something he only did over Bucky. They had no idea how many opponents they were facing—or even who, really, because someone had to be in charge of this operation—or what Bucky’s status was.

Tony set Steve down, slipped over to pick up Clint, and Sam came on comms to tell them he was mission control now.

“What did you give him?” Tony asked, and Clint grinned. “Is he giggling?”

Natasha said, “He’s very relaxed now. Just—be clear about your questions.”

Steve waved his hand in the air. “I can’t believe he’s still awake.” The three of them slogged through the snow to the front of the monument. “Must have been the really good drugs.”

“Oh yeah, they are,” Sam murmured. “I feel nooo pain.”

Steve froze. Above what looked like the main entry at the top of the stairs the words “FORGET YOUR PAST” were painted in red—the hair stood up on the back of his neck and he sucked in air.

“That’s...evocative,” Tony said, flipping his faceplate up, Clint halting on his right, mouth open. “I mean, not that I think Barnes would resort to tagging cherished Socialist monuments, but are we sure he didn’t leave that here?”

Sam said, unnaturally cheerful, “Nah, that was there when we got here. The creepiest thing, ain’t it? Made the damn hair stand up on the back of my neck.” Steve thought “creepy” was an understatement—it was as if they were reading some kind of message left specifically for Bucky.

What a thing for Bucky to have seen, when he’d come here to try to _remember_ his fucking past and face it head on, to stand strong against the weight of such brutal memories dragging him under. Steve’s blood was on a slow simmering boil, his face and his head were hot. Those fuckers had Bucky again, inside the very facility where they’d destroyed him as a human being, and whatever minuscule pretense of control Steve had disintegrated. “Tony, take me back the other direction, to the access tunnel. We’re going in that way.”

The hard gleam in Tony’s eyes—which said he wanted to take these sons of bitches apart—was a contrast to his words. “Steve. You think they haven’t blocked that off with a hundred more guys?”

“I don’t care.” If Tony wouldn’t take him, he’d get down there on his own. But Tony reached out and hauled him back by the straps of his shield harness.

“I’m pretty sure we got out of Saigon with less drama.” Steve narrowed his eyes. “Christ, I don’t know—Dunkirk, for the age impaired.” Tony shook his helmeted head. “Barnes already walked into one trap, the last thing we need is you walking into another without backup.”

Steve hefted his shield; apparently the lesson had been lost about what he was willing to do to help Bucky. “Then you take out the entrance and get me inside. I feel the need to make my presence known.”

The faceplate snapped down, Tony was laughing under there. “You’re _so hot_ when you’re burning with righteous fury.”

He picked Steve up and Steve said to Clint, “You head down through this route, pick ’em off if they try to get out. Tony, you pour it on and carve me a path—keep it coming until they’re all down. And Nat, if you see any more reinforcements coming in, use the new cannons, even if it puts the monument at risk.” They were in the air and back down the mountain to the access road in no time: it took him and Tony about ten minutes to clear a safe path before he was inside. Hydra had been stupid, concentrating too many people at the outside mouth of the tunnel and not enough inside at multiple strategic points to pick off either Steve or Clint. Steve _loved_ it when the enemy was stupid.

“Don’t go in angry!” Tony called to him as he made his way around the bodies and headed deeper into the tunnel.

“Yeah, too late for that.” After a couple minutes he stopped and looked around the corridor he’d found himself in. “JARVIS, I’m inside the facility. Which way do I want to go?” Steve asked. This was—it reminded him entirely too much of Schmidt’s fortress; maybe the only difference was that there was no bank of windows the rest of his team could come crashing through. Yet he recognized the same kind of fury he’d had then: someone had taken Bucky from him, someone was doing something terrible to Bucky, and there would be a motherfucking reckoning.

 

* * *

 

_Waking brought a profound sense of disorientation: he was dreaming—or no, he was in cryo—no, wait, he was in some foreign city, it didn’t matter where, they were all the same: grey, featureless, anonymous. Bucky felt Steve’s foot slide up along his ankle to his calf, strong arms tighten around his waist, and remembered: Steve was tucked up behind him in his bed, and they were home._

_The midafternoon sun shone through the huge windows facing west—Steve had comforted him by explaining that the glass allowed them to see out unimpeded but filtered the view from the outside—and Bucky stuck his arm out, letting the rays spill across his skin, nearly as warm as Steve behind him. Steve continued to rub his foot up and down Bucky’s lower leg, while Bucky leaned his head back against Steve’s shoulder._

_“We should get up. Imagine your friends will want to meet me and inspect me, and we can’t sleep the whole day away.” His fingers caressed Bucky’s palm. The first time they’d slept together Steve had run his fingertips along the lines of Bucky’s hand just like this, as if reading his future and Bucky’d thought: I will be happy every day when I go to sleep, happy when I wake up, always happy as long as you’re there; just live past twenty-five, live past thirty, live past—_

_“We’re jetlagged, remember? We have very, very serious jetlag, dangerous jetlag.” Steve snaked his hand down atop Bucky’s thigh, flirting at the edge of his balls._

_“Oh, is that what they’re calling it these days?” Little pecks were delivered to the back of his neck and he sighed into them, closing his eyes, inhaling the musky-sleepy sex scent. Bucky turned to face Steve, pressed his forehead to his. “They’ll have concerns. They’ll want to vet me if I’m gonna stay here. It’s a legitimate fear.”_

_There was that long-suffering look on Steve’s face, and Christ but Bucky had longed for it once he’d started remembering things: withering under Steve’s disapproving indignation, hanging his head in chastened remorse, all the while knowing that nothing he could ever do would make Steve love him any less._

_“I don’t think they’re afraid of you, not anymore. They’re too smart for that, honestly—they’ve all lost pieces of themselves, they have red in their ledgers.”_

_But none of them held the river of red he did. And yet, somehow, Steve still loved him._

_“It feels like a dream,” Bucky said idly, and he recalled it: that liminal moment when the ice came down and he wasn’t blank and black inside just yet, and flashes of a life he knew couldn’t have been his shone in his mind. They were beautiful and fragile and lit with faces that smiled at him and hands that touched him with tenderness: the laughter of little girls and a woman who held him tight in her arms, a man who clapped him on the back with pride, a soldier’s uniform decked with commendations; took him down rows of big black cars on a street dotted with yellow light, the glowing wood of a dark bar, a small narrow bed in a crackerbox apartment. And always a pale, skinny boy with dark blond hair and forget-me-not eyes._

_“It does.” Steve sighed into the crook of his neck. “Whichever one of us is dreaming this, I hope he never wakes up.”_

“Wakey, wakey.”

Bucky was drowning, wet and cold, water running down his face and into his open mouth. Arms aching, his toes just barely touching the ground. Where was—oh, he’d almost reached the Land Rover but a team had been there. A hand grabbed his drenched hair and yanked his head upright; one eye was still cloudy but it was enough to see that he was looking straight into Rumlow’s eyes.

His face was covered in a map of red burns and gnarled flesh; he moved stiffly, awkwardly as he stepped in close to Bucky, almost dragging one leg. In his hand was a stun baton and he smirked as he held it up, zapped it for show. “Thought you supersoldiers healed from your boo-boos more quickly than this—seemed like you were never gonna wake up.”

Rumlow let go of Bucky’s hair and hit him with the baton, just under his ribcage; Bucky seized up violently, flinging his head back, the water choking him. He uncurled coughing and gasping, hawking snot and phlegm at Rumlow’s feet. Somehow they’d disabled all but basic functionality in the weapon arm, his wrists were locked in the old bindings they’d used on him when he acted up. Between the cuffs ran a length of heavy chain which Rumlow had hung from a hook. Bucky remembered this—the freezing water they’d hose him down with when he disobeyed or sometimes just for the hell of it, the electricity, the hook. Those early days when there was still a fragment of him left to fight back and this was how they subdued him.

When he’d caught a breath again Bucky looked around the room—a table behind Rumlow held a few dozen implements; a portable computer terminal; on the wall monitors with different views of the facility and the mountain access road. It took a few seconds to focus his good eye, Bucky couldn’t see well enough to catch all of it—but there was fighting, oh yeah, definitely fighting. Iron Man showed up on one monitor, and on another was—Steve. _Steve was here, he’d brought his team._ They must have found Sam, they had to have found Sam and he was all right...

Rumlow stepped in front of him, blocking the view of the camera feed. “Uh-uh,” Rumlow said, wagging his finger.

“Kill him. This is a waste of time,” an all-too-familiar voice said, and Bucky looked at the laptop to see that same fucking image of Zola flickering on the screen as he’d seen in the computer room.

“Go back in your box,” Rumlow said over his shoulder. Jesus, they were arguing about what to do with him. Rumlow and a Zola computer program were fighting. This was so not the way he’d wanted to die.

“W-why are you w-wasting...my t-time,” Bucky snarled, every bone and muscle in his body on fire, spasming. He sucked in as much air as he could, pulled the pain under the anger so he could function and think about what to do, how to hold out long enough for Steve. “Just do as it says like a good little dog. Get it over with.” Rumlow’d always had a hard-on for suffering; the longer Bucky could keep him engaged, the better for Steve.

“Oh no, no, you don’t get off that easy. We’re gonna dance till your boyfriend cuts in, and then you’re both gonna answer for this.” He waved a hand around his head, then down by his leg. “He dumped a building on my fucking face because you didn’t do your goddamn job. It’s a tossup right now which one gets to watch the other go first, but I’ll decide that when he gets here. Would have liked to get that asshole with the wings, but you two lovebirds will do.”

Bucky kicked his feet up to get some swing so he could catch another glimpse of the monitor; Rumlow punched him in the kidney and hit him with the baton. He screamed; it was as if the arm would tear right out of his shoulder as his muscles contracted and he went limp. Bucky was going under; the concussion hadn’t had a chance to heal before they’d knocked him out back at the vehicle and he had no idea how long he’d been hanging here or how many times Rumlow had stunned or punched him.

The Zola thing’s voice cut through his fog; he opened his eyes as wide as they’d go and blinked repeatedly to make himself focus. “Just shoot him and put me in the case. This revenge fantasy of yours serves no purpose!” it screeched. “The captain is in the facility!”

“It serves my purpose. Cap’s gonna come to the rescue of his damsel in distress and we get two supersoldiers for the price of one. Finish building your new army.” Rumlow turned his gaze on Bucky. “I always knew you were trouble, the minute I saw who you really were. Goddamn war hero Bucky Barnes, how pathetic. You believed all that shit they pumped into you, you were such a good little Hydra soldier. But I told Pierce, I told him bringing you to the States was a bad idea.” He backhanded Bucky across the face. “If he’d listened or you’d have done your goddamn job, none of this would have happened.”

“Aw. Daddy always liked me best.” Bucky spit blood onto Rumlow’s shirt. “Hhnngggaugh!” he bellowed as the baton was driven into his belly.

It was worth it, because he caught another glimpse of the monitors and saw Steve for a quick second. The walkie on the table squawked to life—Bucky only made out a few words, but it sounded as if Hawkeye had secured the first level, possibly by coming through the monument’s access point. They were panicking. This was _good_.

Panting, Bucky tried to bring his heart rate down and stop spasming, but the cold water had lowered his body temperature too much for him to control his shivering and shockiness, the muscle contractions. But Steve was here, he told himself, Steve was coming for him. Depending on when he’d first entered the site, it might take him at least thirty minutes to locate Bucky and fight his way through. And to think he’d always given Steve shit for being such a daredevil.

“I am a _computer_ , I have calculated at least twenty moves ahead. The odds are not in our favor regarding Captain America and his friends. Take me out of here and we will regroup later.” For a computer program, the Zola thing was really worked up—and it was agitating the hell out of Rumlow.

“Shut the fuck up. Just because you told me how to disable his arm doesn’t mean you’re in charge of this operation.”

It was beyond Bucky not to laugh, no matter how much it hurt. Rumlow turned his beady black stare on Bucky, incredulous. “S-sorry, it’s just s-so—so hilarious.” Bucky raked in a huge breath, released it, attempting to control his laughter, because ow. “You are s-so fucked. Steve’s a one-man wrecking crew when it comes to me. Didn’t you read your fucking history?”

Rumlow advanced on him, thunderous, driving his fist into Bucky’s kidneys again and again. Breathe in, out, Bucky told himself when Rumlow let up. He swung his legs up in the air, bicycle kicking to get some leverage, and punched out with his lower body to knock the baton from Rumlow’s hand. Then he wrapped his legs around Rumlow’s neck, locked his legs, and squeezed his thighs together with every bit of strength he had left. Whatever had happened to Rumlow had left him too damaged to fight back at his former strength and he flailed as Bucky swung sideways, trying to pull his legs away. Zola shrieked something Bucky couldn’t hear under the blood pounding in his ears.

Finally Rumlow sank his teeth into Bucky’s inner thigh and broke away from him, picking up the baton, driving it into Bucky’s side over and over as Bucky screamed and screamed. When he was done with his tantrum he stood back, gulping in air.

“Stop this at once!” the Zola thing screeched.

It wouldn’t be long before he’d lose consciousness again, but Bucky didn’t care—there was a certain perverse sense of delight in watching Heckel and Jeckel bicker while Steve mowed his way through the facility.

Bucky eventually raised his head, eyeing the monitor. “Oh, l-look,” he panted. “S-Steve’s got—got guns.” He sucked in air. “H-hasn’t used those since—since the war. But you’d know about that, wouldn’t you?” Bucky glared defiantly at Zola. “I heard he pistol-whipped the shit out of your fat fucking fa—”

“Enough!” it screamed. “Enough of this!” No matter how much Bucky had misbehaved in the first months of his captivity, Zola had never lost his shit the way this program was—not having control over itself was its worst nightmare. That would be something Stark could exploit once they got out of here. “You do not understand. This will be the most powerful version of my mind once my program is complete and I am uploaded to the proper hardware. I will have total control over an entire army, a perfected army, unlike these...failures, these meat sacks I have been forced to rely on. I _must_ be preserved.” The image on the screen broke apart, reformed, as if its tantrum was interrupting its program. Hearing that voice had paralyzed Bucky when he and Sam first encountered it, but whatever power it had over him before had vanished—it was nothing but a terrible cartoon he was forced to watch before the main picture started.

“I’m in the room too, you know, I’m one of those meat sacks, you piece of shit. Someone’s gotta carry you out of here in a suitcase if you want your precious program to survive, so maybe you oughta think twice about including me in your disposable tools—”

“Shut up! Kill Barnes now and be done with this. We must leave _immediately_.”

“Jesus Christ. I can’t believe I ever thought you were frightening. Seriously, death would be preferable to listening to you two bleat at each other,” Bucky said.

Before Rumlow could hit him with the baton Bucky scissor-kicked up and sent it flying. Rumlow pulled his SIG out of his belt as he limped back a few steps. If he’d been at one hundred percent, Bucky never would have lasted this long, but Rumlow was blinded by his rage and weakened by his injuries. Bucky tried to swing up again, make himself a moving target, but he couldn’t get the momentum. His heart was in his throat, tears pricking behind his eyes: he should have done everything he could to stay alive, he should not have given in to the temptation of provoking them. He should have stayed alive for Steve.

As Rumlow thumbed the safety off, the door flew off its hinges and crashed into the room. Steve was flinging his shield at Rumlow as he tried to fire at Bucky, and all the while the Zola image wailed in the background. Bucky gave a relieved cry as Rumlow went down, turned his—probably red-rimmed and tearful—eyes up toward Steve. “You punk. What took you so long?” he whispered, letting loose a half sob.

“Well, some jackass kept telling me to stay home.”

Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky’s waist and lifted him enough so Bucky could pull the chain off of the hook, lowering him gently to the floor as Bucky dropped his aching arms and the chain over Steve’s shoulders. He let his head fall forward against Steve’s neck; he smelled like gunpowder and sweat—it was heaven. Bucky allowed himself to sink into Steve’s strong embrace. “I got you,” Steve said as he brought his hands up to cover Bucky’s on his shoulders, kissed Bucky’s temple. “I got you this time.”

“Yeah, you do.” Bucky shuddered. “They disabled my arm somehow,” Bucky said; he wanted to pull the cuffs off and break the chain but he seemed able to move the metal arm only up or down, and even then not well at all. “Sam?”

“We got him, too. He’s doped to the gills and laughing his ass off in the jet.”

“My hero.” Steve rained little kisses over his face, his neck, and Bucky held him as tight as he could with one useful arm. “Why’d you do this, Stevie? You coulda got yourself killed. I’m not worth it.”

With a frustrated grunt, Steve said, “When Nat looked into this place, she found out they’d started building it up even before Insight. I figured we could hang back in case of trouble—better to apologize later than ask permission first. But everything blew up a lot faster when you got inside, I guess.”

“I had ’em on the ropes.”

“I know you did,” and if there was the tiniest sob coming from Steve’s throat, Bucky wasn’t going to say anything about that. Steve slid his hand along Bucky’s metal wrist and snapped one of the chain links.

Bucky’s legs were shaky as hell, but he stepped away from Steve and picked up the shield, kicking Rumlow for good measure. “I am gonna set him on fire, and then I’m gonna put him out. And then I’m gonna set fire to him all over again.” He kicked him once more, then went over to the portable terminal, wrapped the chain around his right hand, and proceeded to beat the now mercifully silent Zola computer into tiny shards.

When he eventually stopped, he looked up to see Steve touching his ear. “Yeah, I got him. Yeah, it was Zola again—the computer version of him, anyway. And Rumlow. I know. Well, he’s not gonna escape custody this time.” He pulled Bucky against him, smoothed his hair back. “Sam said you had a severe head injury. What else happened?”

“Ah, nothing that won’t heal. I’m a little wobbly, not gonna lie.”

Steve glanced at the stun baton on the floor, ran his hand along Bucky’s soaked t-shirt and jeans—he knew what kind of burns and bruises would be underneath them, his face was doing that thing Bucky knew all too well: all his features drawing together, his eyes going red around the edges. “Were they trying to get information from you or...” Steve wouldn’t want to say the word “punish” but Bucky could tell that’s what he was thinking.

Shaking his head, Bucky said, “I think if Zola’d had his way, they would have lured you in for the rescue and then used our genetic material to finish building a new army. They were setting up for that. But Rumlow just wanted payback—for one of us to watch the other one die.”

“Man, to think I used to like working with that prick.”

“I think he had a crush on you.” Bucky grinned and Steve’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling.

For once, Bucky couldn’t read the look on his face; there was a darkness in his eyes he’d never seen before. “You need medical attention,” was all Steve said, tucking Bucky against his side, arm underneath his, placing his .45 in Bucky’s right hand. “Stark’s got the lower levels cleared, and Barton’s just above us, but there will still be pockets of resistance. Watch my six and stay behind the shield.” They hobbled out of the room—he was half tempted to tell Steve to go on his own, he’d only slow Steve down, come back for him later, but Bucky really didn’t want to spend one more goddamn minute in this shithole. “Sorta like the good old days, huh?” Steve remarked, smiling his shy smile, and Bucky was so overcome by the love that surged up inside him that he swayed on his feet. Steve was—indefatigable in his devotion, he had never given up on him, never once, and he never would. Somehow, though Bucky’d never thought to deserve one, this was his reward.

“The only thing good about the good old days was you, pal,” and Bucky kissed him in gratitude.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“Seriously, if you say you’re sorry one more time, I’ma punch you.” Sam had apparently managed to recover sufficiently that he had stopped finding everything incredibly funny and settled into a happy, mellow state where he could hold steady enough to suture the wound on Bucky’s forehead. His color had returned, too, though Bucky hoped they’d be on their way home soon so he could get the real care he needed.

“I owe you.”

Sam glanced down at him. “No, you don’t. You’re harder on yourself than anyone else could ever be. Some of us just wanted you to find what you needed, so you can stop that debt shit right now. That’s what friends _do_.”

His throat felt hot and tight, so he told Sam to stop suturing and got up. Now that he’d had a chance to clean up a little, eat something, and their reinforcements had arrived, he wasn’t certain what to do with himself; he felt extraneous, as if somehow the reason they were here wasn’t because of this journey he’d started.

As he exited the plane, Sam said, “Hey, Bucky.” When Bucky turned to him Sam was putting away the suture kit, a half smile on his face. “In spite of all this” —he motioned at his leg— “I’m really glad you let me come with you. I’m really glad I had the chance to get to know you.”

Bucky nodded at him, said, “Likewise.”

After trudging up to the monument stairs, Bucky looked around but didn’t see Steve, or anyone else for that matter. He stood there for a while, a cloak of soft late afternoon sun settling around the building’s shoulders, staring at the words that had shaken him up so badly only a handful of hours ago. Now they just seemed like words, like all the rest of the graffiti and the crumbling raised concrete Cyrillic letters that were falling away from the walls.

Bucky turned to head down the mountain toward the access road and there was Steve, smiling at him. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Steve pushed a lock of hair back behind his ear, ran his hand along Bucky’s neck.

“Buck.” His gaze was curious, worried, intense. “When I saw those words” —he waved a hand at the Forget Your Past sign— “I think I finally understood that you were trying to put all of this behind you, not relive it. And I’m sorry I made it so hard for you. I promise I won’t do that again. I want to know what’s going on inside you.”

Bucky dropped his head, tears quivered at the corners of his eyes and his head ached. Sorrow surged through him like some molten tsunami, unstoppable and hot and it scored him to the bone, the grief and the tears burning behind his eyelids, his throat on fire. His body shook as he pressed his hand to his eyes, tried to calm his breath and the wet, hiccupy sounds coming from his chest.

“I miss who I used to be.”

God, this was so humiliating, yet somehow he felt enclosed in the silence of the snow, embraced by Steve’s tender concern. Finally Bucky wiped at his eyes and stared at the ground and said, swallowing his dark hot tears and shame and confusion, “I _hate_ this—I hate being broken and sick inside and—he’s still in here but I can never be him again. And I—I miss him. And I know you miss him, too.” Bucky stopped, too ashamed to finish, pressing his hand to his eyes.

Afraid to look at Steve, he stood there, crushed by this terrible heaviness, but when he felt Steve’s hands on his arms Bucky turned his eyes up to Steve’s face. Tears glittered in the light—on his lashes, his cheeks—and his chest heaved up and down as when he was little. He dropped his shield in the snow. “I miss who I used to be, too, and I know you miss him, that little guy who was too dumb not to run away from a fight.” They stood there for a while, trembling, lost, but holding each other up the way they always had. Steve wiped the tears from Bucky’s eyes and then his own. “You’re right, I do miss the old you, just the way I miss the old me.

“But even if—even if none of the things that happened to us had happened, we’d be different, wouldn’t we? We wouldn’t have stayed the same fellas we were then. I love you, Buck. God, I love you. And I don’t want the memory of those boys we lost along the way to stop us from finding out who we’re going to be next.”

Steve pushed them both down into the snow, a little explosion of white puffing up all around them, and Steve was grinning and kissing him and pushing his hair back and there were tears and snot and huge wet ragged breaths but it was good, it was all okay, they would make it okay.

Bucky reached up to cup the back of Steve’s head, pulled Steve’s mouth to his. “This is the rest of it—us here together, living our lives. I know it can’t be easy for you but... Whatever you have to do, I’m behind you, I have my hand on your back,” Steve said. “I’m pretty crazy about this guy right here.”

Bucky kissed him hard. He was freezing and wet and he ached all over and there was an elephant crushing his battered chest, but all he wanted to do was lie here and kiss Steve for maybe the rest of his messed-up life.

“Okay.” Bucky nodded his head.

“You do whatever you need to. You go wherever you need to go,” Steve said again and peppered Bucky’s cheeks with kisses, tucked his cold wet face into Bucky’s neck. As they held each other Bucky felt a stillness wash through him, a flicker of warmth at the corner of his mind and he smiled against Steve’s skin. “Just don’t go without me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is an epilogue coming shortly!


	5. Epilogue: Don’t Go Without Me

This time, Bucky was ready. The snow had largely disappeared except on the highest peaks; the traces of what had happened a few months before had vanished as well. The inky blue river still snaked its way through the canyon floor, leading them southwest to where he might have ended up back in ’45.

And it didn’t hurt to have the entire Avengers team waiting behind him in case trouble erupted—or to have Steve here by his side. Bucky’d found himself counting again, touching thumb to fingertips, but Steve had gently tapped on his wrist and pulled him out of that loop, and Bucky had gratefully squeezed Steve’s hand: _I’m here, I’m present_.

Sam gave him a measured look. “Make sure to give yourself enough room for the landing—it takes a really long time to master that, and you know how rocky that ground is. I don’t care how fast you heal, you land on one of those bad and you’ll be wrecked, and then Tony or Thor’s gonna have to interrupt their game of cribbage to come get you.” He wagged his finger. “Don’t bust up their cribbage.”

“I know, I know, this is like the fifth time you’ve told me that,” Bucky groused and glanced over at Steve so they could share an eyeroll.

“I don’t want you breaking them, is all.”

“As long as your concern is for the wings, and not the fellas using them.” Steve flashed him a smirk and Sam curled a lip up in response.

“They are kind of one of a kind.” Sam folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll be right here if you need anything.” He tapped his ear. This was about the fifth time he’d said that, too. If he reminded them that the team was back at the plane teaching Thor how to play obscure card games Bucky thought Steve might burst a blood vessel.

“We know.” Steve shook his head and sighed. “I promise you we won’t break them. We’re going to be fine. I think. I hope.”

“You really don’t like these things much, do you?” Steve had adamantly refused to be the one who learned how to use them.

“No, they’ve saved my ass plenty of times, and Bucky’s. I like them just fine. As long as they’re being controlled by other people.”

Sam grinned. “Wow, so there really is something one of you idiots is afraid of.”

Waving a hand dismissively, Steve said, “Everyone has something they’re afraid of. Flying on little aluminum foil wings” —he turned to Bucky and smirked— “swans...”

“It was _one swan_ ,” Bucky said crossly. “And it was _vicious_.”

With a whoop, Sam pointed at them, cackling. “I am so gonna make you spill that one on the trip home.”

Sam stepped back and Bucky popped his arms out like Sam had shown him, opening the wings. Flying lessons with Sam had been a ball, but they were heading down into the canyon and the air currents would be different there, it wouldn’t be a controlled environment like Stark’s lab or the tower. Still, Bucky liked a challenge.

 _Satisfied_ wasn’t quite the way Bucky would have described himself after Buzludzha; he’d found a different type of closure than he’d sought when he first left for Austria, a different path through the cold dungeons in his mind. There had been multiple copies of the Zola program in various states of completion that Stark and Banner planned to dismantle, and they’d taken enough prisoners to keep the authorities busy for years. That part of Bucky’s past had no more power over him; Bucky’d needed to affirm that he’d lived for something, that he didn’t just die at the bottom of a canyon for nothing and he’d done it, filled himself with resolve the way an empty sail fills with wind.

He was horrible, and broken, and a mess of a work in progress, but Steve loved him, god, _Steve loved him_ , and that was enough to make him worthy, enough to keep his feet on this earth and make good on this new life he’d been given.

They’d gone back to New York, they’d gone _home_ , and Steve had been almost out of control—as soon as Banner gave Bucky a clean bill of health Steve had been all over him with a primitive, hungry need, the two of them fucking like wildcats. They left the apartment in a complete shambles and both of them earned more bruises and scrapes than they’d gotten over there—shit, they should have worn _body armor_ and _helmets_.

Days passed before they came up for air. One morning Steve woke Bucky up with kisses on each notch of his spine and said against the skin of his neck, “I was thinking.”

“That’s never good.”

Steve blew a raspberry on him. “You know how I said that I’d never wanted to see where the Valkyrie went down?” Bucky _mm-hmmed_ into the pillow and reached down to take Steve’s hand. “I didn’t really lose myself there the way you lost yourself in Austria, or Bulgaria. But that little guy I lost—that happened in Brooklyn. I know the building isn’t there anymore, but I thought maybe we could go see it. Maybe say goodbye.”

“That’s a swell idea,” Bucky said, and that was how they’d found themselves on a street in Brooklyn Heights looking at the almost unrecognizable place where this new Steve had been created. Steve told Bucky some things about Project Rebirth he’d never shared with him before, and they remained there, wistful and melancholy, foreheads pressed together.

And if he’d been feeling a strange weightlessness, a suspension of time since their return home, it had been easy to bury it in the background of his new life with Steve, in the work of figuring out who this new Bucky Barnes was. But there in Brooklyn, Steve said, “I think we should go back to Austria, finish what you and Sam started. I was never the same after you fell, either. All that anger and guilt in me that you ran away from—maybe it’s down to me to put that to rest, too.”

“I told you I forgave you, jackass—I think the only person who owes you any forgiveness is you.”

Steve did that thing he always did: a half smile and a sideways twitch of his head, but Bucky could tell that he was thinking along the same lines. They were their own worst enemies, him and Steve, always seeing the good only in each other and never in themselves: their peculiarly lovesick tunnel-vision.

Sam had immediately volunteered his wings for the trip, Thor had volunteered to fly them down, Stark, too, but there was something about Sam’s wings Bucky felt pretty attached to now, and he really did want to learn how to use them—just in case they were ever trapped on a remote snowy mountain bleeding out and concussed.

Standing here now with Steve, Bucky no longer had to hold on to all those regrets and fears—he could set them free up here, let them float away on the wind. Steve was a little shakier, a little more melancholy; this was the first time he’d confronted this place since he’d watched Bucky fall away from him seventy years ago, but Bucky squeezed his hand again, reminded him to breathe.

“See you on the flipside,” Sam said, and climbed up to his spotter’s position.

Bucky turned to Steve. “You ready?”

“I was born—”

“Nuh-uh. Don’t you dare.”

“Come on. I’ve been dying to say that since I woke up.”

“No.”

With a put-upon look, Steve sniffed. “Take all the fun out of everything. Yes, I’m ready.”

Bucky moved behind him and slipped his arms around Steve. “Thanks for this.”

It was awkward, but Steve turned his head and Bucky ducked under the bill of his ballcap, kissing his perfect mouth. He was beginning to see the shape of closure better now that Steve was here with him: it wasn’t so much about letting go or forgetting a past that had shaped you, but about reclaiming the space those things had taken up in your life. It would never be simple for Bucky, he would have more dark days than light and he could never forget what they’d done to him or what he’d done to others, but he had Steve, he had the future. Closure made room for everything else—not merely the anger and regret and guilt and pain defining you but the new stuff too, a space for them to know the men they were becoming.

He hit the jets and said again, “You ready?”

“Yeah, Buck. Let’s go.”

Bucky remembered the last night they’d had together before he’d shipped out, before they would both be irrevocably changed forever, when Steve had asked him where they were going. Sam’s wings lifted them off the ground—they hovered a little as Bucky adjusted for Steve’s weight and Steve wriggled into a comfortable position—and then Bucky and Steve soared off into the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone suggested that there should be a timestamp of Sam teaching Bucky how to use the wings. I am sort of tempted...

**Author's Note:**

> For the people who might be interested, this was inspired by [a photo series](http://humanplanet.com/timothyallen/2012/02/buzludzha-buzludja-bulgaria/) I saw a few years ago from a photographer who visited Buzludzha in the winter, in particular [this photo](http://i0.wp.com/humanplanet.com/timothyallen/wp-content/gallery/buzludja/thumbs/thumbs_bulgaria-timothy-allen-13.jpg?zoom=1.5&resize=509%2C340). I kept thinking about Bucky and the words Forget Your Past, and the story took shape from there. The words have been painted over since then, I understand, but I'm ignoring that.
> 
> If you're enjoying, I'd love to know! Or [reblog on Tumblr](http://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/142726590895/final-chapter-update-dont-wait-up-for-me)


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